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Property assessments in Nova Scotia likely to rise

Nova Scotians should brace themselves for a jump in their property’s valuations when they see their assessments this week, says the past president of the Halifax Regional Homeowners Association.

Owen Carrigan, a former executive with the now-dormant group, said Sunday he expects those numbers will follow the steady climb of years past.

“Property assessments have been going up constantly and I’m sure they’ll go up again,” said Carrigan. “They never stop, even when it’s a buyer’s market. They still assume that the prices will get better.”

Last year, total property values in Nova Scotia rose 6.8 per cent from 2010, with homes in this province assessed at a collective $65.1 billion.

In 2010, Nova Scotia’s property value was up 6.5 per cent from the previous year.

The body that issues those assessments, the Property Valuation Services Corp., will start mailing the 2012 notices of assessment today. The group will also report overall provincial trends at a news conference this morning.

Although the province’s property values spiked in the past two years, homeowners did not necessarily see comparable increases on their assessments and, by extension, on their property taxes.

Development growth accounts for about 2 to 2.5 per cent of Nova Scotia’s total property values each year, a spokesman with the corporation said after last January’s assessments; as new buildings rise from vacant lots, the land’s value climbs, too.

And about 75 per cent of homeowners and resource property owners qualified for the province’s capped assessment program, which was set at 2.9 per cent.

Lacey also said he expects that total property value assessments will go up this year.

Since the assessments are based on market prices set two years ago, the economic growth expected to come as a result of the multibillion-dollar federal shipbuilding contract at Halifax Shipyard should not be reflected in the 2012 assessment notices.