Re: Premier Eby needs to address these assessments (editorial)
Dear editor:
As I explained to MLA Darlene Marzari in the 1990s, BC Assessment doesn’t create assessments. It’s as though a mirror is annually held up to the market and, by law, assessments must reflect “actual,” or market value. Buyers and sellers create this market, not the B.C. government.
A progressive tax ensues: if you own a $1-million condo in LoLo, you pay one-tenth of the taxes that someone pays who owns a $10-million home in the British Properties.
No, the July 2022 valuations arriving in January 2023 will not “likely vary greatly” – perhaps plus-or-minus five to 10 per cent. The good news: because everyone is slightly over-assessed, the other Assessment Act goal of equitable assessments is realized. In your 2024 notice, your assessment will reflect the lower market values occurring in July 2023. Everyone is in the same boat.
Agreed, home prices are too high, and perhaps higher interest rates, commuters clogging the bridges every rush hour, limiting foreign buys and inflation, will have a moderating effect on prices. Time will tell.
Premier David Eby needs local partners to rekindle the development of housing for the “missing middle,” that which was abandoned in favour of the soundly debunked supply-side economics. At least he’s trying, where others have failed, miserably.
Our children deserve better.
Derek Holloway
North Vancouver District
Now retired, Holloway says he worked 28 years as an appraiser with BC Assessment.
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