Quote:
Originally Posted by sailor734
1840% appreciation in 2 years seems decent. 
Seriously, the city needs to come up with a plan that identifies bone fide developers and let's them get projects approved while screening out speculators who sit on development land. Maybe when you put land up for sale it should be reassessed at the asking price?  |
I didn't want to wade back into the property tax debate when there's been such optimistic development news in the Saint John thread lately... so figured this was the better thread to respond to this post.
I really, really, hope that people who are filling out the
NB government's property tax reform survey are mentioning something about the vacant land piece.
Some of us clearly have different opinions on which vacant properties are the most egregiously under assessed by the SNB tax assessment system, but I think the vast majority of us on the forum, regardless of our political leanings, agree that there is a fundamental flaw with the way the SNB system under assesses vacant property.
The Saint John thread is chalk full of examples of vacant properties which are critically under assessed based on fair market valuations in the core of Uptown Saint John... vacant property that is fully serviced and ripe for development. This should be priority number one for fixing the flaws in the SNB assessment system... fairly assessing the value of fully serviced vacant land in urban areas. The assessments for these properties need to reflect their fair market value, not their "current use" as vacant land, which promotes speculation and hinders overall development in NB's cities.
However, I think the SNB assessment system needs to overhauled on the issue of vacant land across the board, not just for these vacant, serviced lots in the middle of our cities. I've already brought up many times how critically under assessed large swaths of vacant land is within Saint John's PDA, and I believe that still remains an issue in Saint John, and other cities in NB, but the other day I was looking more outside the city.
I was on the SNB website looking at property around Duck Pond Beach, because I was interested in taking a hike out there, and got to looking at the assessed values on some of the huge swaths of coastal land around this incredibly scenic location, much of which was either classified as Timberland and vacant.
Altogether, these properties pictured constituting more than 5000 acres of land beside one of the most scenic coastal locations in the province are valued at under $50,000.
I can understand land in the middle of the forest in the middle of the province being assessed at a very low value per acre, but a location like this ? No way! These assessments just don't reflect anything close to fair market value.
Found another example nearby that is even more ridiculous:
$1700 assessment for a huge piece of coastal land that the government collects a whopping $28.83 a year in taxes from. Yet, how much could they collect if it was sold and someone cleared off a small spot for an RV or tiny, off grid cabin?
It seems like bogus valuations on vacant land is something that doesn't get enough attention when it comes to tax reform in NB, at least not when compared to the attention industrial property tax reform gets.
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Not to say he might not get a promotion in a future shuffle
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