Property owners in Victoria and Esquimalt are now finding out that the value of their residences and businesses, on average, may have moderately changed.
In B.C. Assessment’s 2012 assessment roll of more than 144,000 properties in the Capital Region, single-family residences in Victoria, on average, were assessed at $576,000, up from $566,000 in the 2011 roll.
The roll was publicly released Tuesday.
Similar dwellings in Esquimalt were assessed an average of $501,000 in the 2012 roll, down from 504,000 in 2011.
The region’s residential property owners will see their values between two per cent below and five per cent above average, said Reuben Danakody, area assessor for B.C. Assessment’s Saanich-based office.
“Different neighbourhoods will do different things for a myriad of reasons,” he said. “It could be for market demand in a particular area, or maybe just a market correction. That’s the typical market movement in this community.”
Meanwhile, owners of commercial, industrial and multi-family properties, such as residential condominiums in Victoria, like the rest of the region, will see their property values climb between five and 15 per cent.
“If you look at vacant commercial land in Victoria and Saanich, it’s very, very thin,” Danakody said. “So that’s creating an upward pressure on prices, and investors are looking to buy property in Victoria.”
Overall, the roll of properties assessed at market value as of July 1, 2011 increased to $92.9 billion from $91.6 billion last year in the region, which extends to Sooke, half way up the Malahat Drive of the Trans-Canada Highway, out to Sidney and the Gulf Islands.
Almost $970 million of this growth was due to new construction, renovations, new subdivisions and rezoning, much of it in Langford, said Danakody.
“We’re able to look at values that are basically holding, if not growing marginally in Greater Victoria, and that’s very good news because there’s a lot of heavy investment in real estate - not just in this region but certainly across the country,” Danakody said.
“I would say this is a very good sign of a stable market when you consider the global economic situation right now, (and) when you consider what’s going on not too far from us across the border with their real estate market.”