Thought this was the more apt place to post this.

While visiting we saw a house that we might be buying, but not necessarily living in immediately.

In the UK you don't have to pay council taxes on empty buildings. Is that true in Hamilton also?

do you mean if you buy a house, but don't live in it for a while?
If so, then no, you have to pay the taxes as soon as you buy it.

A house in an empty and uninhabitable condition (which I'm lead to believe just means no furnishings) is not required to pay council taxes.

No such luck here.

Here you'll have to pay property taxes no matter if the home is occupied, or not. The vacant home 2 doors north of my house has been vacant for approx. 20 years and they pay taxes every year on the house. Ironically it's actually assessed to be worth more than my inhabited house.

The only way to reduce the taxes is to remove the building (i.e. tear it down).

That's one of the reasons the developers (property squatters) downtown have torn down so many buildings and replaced them with parking lots. It reduced their property taxes in addition to providing them with parking revenue.

the word... is... bugger.

Actually, the trend downtown is simply not to pay your taxes at all, and just go into arrears.

It's not like the city does anything about it anyway. They'd probably give you a grant. :tup:

I wouldn't want the UK system where an empty house pays no taxes. Geez, you'd have a bunch of more of them.

And more then likely being used for drug addicted people hiding out.

I don't think we have quite the empty house issue, most british property is so over valued it's a total waste to leave it empty! The only areas with large amounts of empty buildings are those areas which are slated for urban renewal.

I fought the man
 

and I WON!!!!!

It wasn't a blow out, and I lost the shutout. But, a win is a win and by my figuring I won by a score of 4 - 1.

My assessment is now going to drop by $22,000 to a point where the assessment is now only $5,000 more then we paid for the house in March 2008 (purchase offer mid-February 2008).

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!

That's a good victory!! :)

It looks like we're heading towards a 7.9% property tax increase. This is better than the proposed double figure of 11-13%.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDqQ40RW4AAGnQJ?format=jpg
https://twitter.com/cityofhamilton/

Still, being asked to pay an extra average of $382 is too much. At this point, we need to cut some services. Perhaps cut the service hours of recreational centres.

The city needs to get back to it's core mandate of maintaining infrastructure. Not the city's responsibility to house, maintain encampments, poets etc.

Couldn't agree more. There are so many layers of municipal services and need to get back to stripped down basics. Zero based budgeting a must.

0.89% of the increase is dedicated to the roads backlog.

The city has a plan to implement a 0.89% increase every year until 2033 when annual roads spending will hit $195 million (vs $65 million last year). So they are getting there.

Social services ARE the city's responsibility. As long as senior levels of government ignore the current issues, municipal governments will need to step in.

Maybe police budgets should also not be part of municipal mandates. In fact, like social services, I absolutely believe they should be a provincial responsibility.

And this is very welcome.

I weigh the personal cost to maintain the suspension in my vehicles against what is spent on roads using property tax revenue. Over the last 3 years I think I'm a net negative!

Yup. The last 2 years have seen 0.5% dedicated roads funding increases, so 0.89% is a new increase this year.

If you look at the capital budget forecast, roads spending really ramps up around 2026. Around then the City is planning to start sinking some serious cash into roads. Main st will get redone, they are planning on widening Rymal, Garner, and Barton (Stoney creek), and a whole whack of resurfacings like King St in the east end, Golf Links Rd, etc.

This year the schedule is for York / Cannon to get done, as well as Wilson’s east end and Upper Wentworth beside Limeridge.

Hamilton has a big hole to dig out of on the roads front but I think we are going to finally start seeing some real progress in the next few years.

The crazy thing is that $195 million is considered the “Sustainable” level of roads spending, and for decades the city spent less than 1/4 of that. It’s a miracle roads aren’t worse than they are.

Do you know when Aberdeen is being redone? It is badly needed. Same with Charlton. Completely neglected, and in some areas almost undrivable.