Property Taxes and Housing Allocation Under Financial Constraints. Joshua Coven, Sebastian Golder, Arpit Gupta, and Abdoulaye Ndiaye, June 2024. Summary by Arpit Gupta.
Worth exploring for sure but over the last 10 years, property taxes and house prices have doubled. I don’t see a clear correlation between having high property tax resulting in lower price. I think the city ultimately has to spend its revenue more wisely, look at creating more development opportunities whilst shifting from a model where revenues are generated via development fees to one that is generated by property tax.
Good question. I think there's a couple distinct policies that would be helpful:
(1) Raising the overall level of property taxes would help to make home ownership more attainable for younger people. (And would help to fill the funding gap needed for capital spending.)
(2) Shifting the burden of property taxes more towards land (and lower-density housing), and away from buildings (and higher-density housing), would help to encourage redevelopment. The city of Vancouver used to have a higher rate of tax on land and a lower rate of tax on buildings.
Worth exploring for sure but over the last 10 years, property taxes and house prices have doubled. I don’t see a clear correlation between having high property tax resulting in lower price. I think the city ultimately has to spend its revenue more wisely, look at creating more development opportunities whilst shifting from a model where revenues are generated via development fees to one that is generated by property tax.
Can we bump up higher taxes on SFD to encourage multi-family? Lower taxes if you have more than 3 in the dwelling, to encourage basement rent-outs?
Good question. I think there's a couple distinct policies that would be helpful:
(1) Raising the overall level of property taxes would help to make home ownership more attainable for younger people. (And would help to fill the funding gap needed for capital spending.)
(2) Shifting the burden of property taxes more towards land (and lower-density housing), and away from buildings (and higher-density housing), would help to encourage redevelopment. The city of Vancouver used to have a higher rate of tax on land and a lower rate of tax on buildings.