While the economy of Tumbler Ridge is slowly recovering, it doesn’t appear the housing market has caught up, with mean property prices for an average single family home sliding from $146,000 to $143,000.
There were 2,394 total properties on the roll this year, from single family homes to coal mines, up a mere 0.04 percent from the previous year, with the overall assessed value of all classes at $414.55 million, down 3.98 percent from the year before.
This is the fifth year in a row that the overall assessed values for all properties have dropped for Tumbler Ridge, though only the second year in row that single family homes have decreased (after an increase of 5.48 percent in 2017).
The biggest culprit for this year’s net property value is the major industrial tax class, which is down $7.6 million dollars.
Scott Sitter, an Assessor with BC Assessment, says about $1.3-million of that was due to a re-assessment of the Wolverine mine. “The balance is all to do with oil and gas property: equipment removal, closures, suspensions, etc.”
Many of these properties have been closed permanently, though Sitter says the word is fairly vague and doesn’t actually mean the property will be closed forever, merely that there is no plan to re-open the site for the foreseeable future. “All they have to do is advise us by November 30 that they are closing. There is no real definition of permanent,” he says. “We have a special industrial team and it’s very technical when it comes to the laws. We have a dedicated oil and gas team, and it gets a little complicated, but in the simplest form, they just have to inform us they are closing.”
Elsewhere in the northeast, housing prices dropped everywhere but Dawson Creek and Pouce Coupe.
In Chetwynd, prices dropped from $258,000 to $250,000, a change of 2.9 percent. Fort St. John saw the biggest drop in terms of raw dollars, with the assessed value for an average single-family home decreasing $18,000 from $387,000 to $369,000, a drop of 4.6 per cent. In Taylor, the average house value dropped by 4.9 percent, which was a larger percentage, but the values there are not as high, so the average house lost $16,000, going from $336,000 to $320,000.
The hardest hit community in the northeast, percentage wise, was Fort Nelson, which saw the value of the average home decline from $179,000 to $164,000, a drop of 8.4 percent.
Homeowners in Hudson’s Hope will see average assessments decline just under one per cent, from $199,000 to $197,000 year-over-year.
Property values rose in Dawson Creek and Pouce Coupe. In Dawson, the assessed value of a single-family home rose $7000, from $261,000 to $268,000. Pouce Coupe saw an ever steeper increase, with houses going up 5.2 percent, from $212,000 to $223,000, or $11,000.
While the Northeast saw mostly decreases in Assessed values, the rest of the north did much better.
Indeed, the community of Granisle saw the average housing price rise from $42,000 to $61,000, an increase of 44.9 percent.
Prince George, the largest population centre in the north, saw housing values go up 5.2 percent, from $287,000 to $302,000.
The hardest hit community in all the north? Kitimat, where the average selling price of a single family home plummeted from $278,000 to $233,000. This was not only the largest decrease percentage wise (dropping 16.2 percent of the home’s value year over year), but also the largest drop in terms of sheer dollars, losing $45,000.
While the assessed value of your property does affect the potential resale value, it is also used by the District to assess taxation rates, an important consideration as council moves into budget season.
