Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce
BTW, do property taxes ever go down (outside of failed regions the likes of which you might find in Michigan and Upper State NY)? And if the value of my home does go up, won't my taxes also go up? If I'm a senior on a fixed income, I might not be very happy about that.
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Overall taxes should never be expected to go down because of general inflation and because of the particular infrastructure deficit that the city currently finds itself in.
For 2019 the City's budget grew by 3.4% so that's what the average increase in property taxes was.
Property taxes for any particular property only increase by more than the aforementioned 3.4% if the assessed value of the particular property increased by more than the average increase in assessed values across Hamilton as a whole.
Living in an area that is seeing growth and increasing values means that you can expect that your property taxes will increase faster than average. But that increase in taxes is directly tied to an increase in property values. For urban Hamilton the property tax rate is 1.38%. So for every $1,000 relative increase in the value of your property you taxes will increase by $13.80.
The average homeowner paid 3.4% more in taxes in 2019 compared to 2018, that works out to $120 for the average homeowner. As per MPAC assessments the average homeowner is experiencing property value growth of 6.75%/year, assessments will be updated in 2020. The only homeowners that saw a larger increase in taxes are those homeowners that experienced above average gains in property values. Even with the tax increase property owners became overall wealthier.
In my personal opinion that's a very small tax relative to the increase in wealth. The following simplifies the math and overstates the taxes, but in general you can become $100,000 richer through the increase in your property value and you only have to pay $1,380/year for that extra wealth. I think that's a great deal, and I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for people that complain about it. Especially when you can can pay the tax out of the wealth increase by refinancing a property at 4% (or less), which would bring your tax cost to $1,435/year without having to pay a dime out of pocket - a bargain for being $100,000 richer!
I can cite sources for the above if need be.