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well up here in Fort McMurray I pay $1,800 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment in a building constructed in 1972. It is in a nice neighbourhood though (or at least as nice as neighbourhoods get in Fort McMurray). I was actually considering sinking $450,000 into a 2 bedroom condo unit but the advice I've received in this thread has me thinking again. It's going to suck though if there's another massive growth spurt and housing costs jump 35% in a couple of years  So yeah, I can't imagine New York or London are all that more expensive than Fort Mac. And if they are you have to consider what you receive for paying that much. Atleast there's solid reasons to want to live in those places beyond there not being any jobs available in your province of orgin.
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Aug 28, 2013 22:55
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:And my cousin just moved out there to save up $15k working at McDonald's for a few months well my first year up here I made about 85k gross income (I'm a municipal employee so we work 35 hours a week at the low end of the wage spectrum) and I lived in municipal transitional housing for the low low cost of $1,050 a month - which got me a bedroom and a shared bath in a house with 5 strangers. I saved up probably around 25-30k that first year so it can be done if you live on the cheap, but not if he / she pays market rent and parties. If your cousin doesn't mind living in Fort McMurray, tell them to pick up a trade and they can make some real money.
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Aug 28, 2013 23:52
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Cultural Imperial posted:Today in municipal governments that think they're awesome at buying and selling real estate: Pulling this from the last page because I am an assessor and this sort of thing is not uncommon or surprising at all, especially for land which is to be re-zoned and incorporated into some municipal development. There's nothing about the situation to suggest to me that the town got ripped off in any way. That article isn't exactly clear on this point but it seems that the current zoning of the land was for agricultural use? The assessment would have to reflect the major restrictions on development potential that a lot with that type of zoning would have. The administration of Langley Town probably directed the appraisers to prepare the report with the assumption that the re-zoning would go through and the lands would be part of this development area they are planning - you could bet that the property owners would have been aware of this pending development and would not have sold the property at a price reflecting it's current permitted use. A side observation would be that assessments in BC are prepared by a provincial authority as opposed to a municipal ran assessment department. I know BC assessment has close to a thousand people working for them, but it's not enough to prepare an accurate site-specific value for every one of the millions on parcels of land in the province annually. An appraisal is always going to be a much better indicator of market value then simply looking at the assessed value. Starsfan fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Oct 20, 2013 |
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Oct 20, 2013 10:48
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PT6A posted:This is because a lot of the most expensive things in any apartment or house exist in basically the same form whether it's a tiny bachelor or a huge house. My intuition is that the kitchen is far and away the most expensive room in any dwelling, and there's only ever one of those in 99% of dwellings. Even if there's a separate wet bar or something, it probably won't have a range and a dishwasher and whatnot. Space itself is not terribly expensive in comparison. "Space" in an apartment building can be pretty drat expensive. Typically a high-rise apartment building base structure will cost something like $120 to $130 per square foot of floor area to build, with an addition $5 per square foot if there is an elevator and maybe $10 per square foot for site preparation and improvements. The cost of everything above the base structure in the apartments (IE. plumbing, HVAC, interior partitioning, floor cover, cabnitry and shelving, entrance / lobby) is maybe $35 to $50 extra per square foot depending on quality. Adjust those figures for the cost of materials and labour, and add the cost to acquire the land on top and whatever entrepreneurial profit (typically 15-20% of all hard costs associated with the property) for the developer. The savings you might get for having a few less kitchens or washrooms in the building because your units have higher room counts is pretty insignificant compared to the whole. Lexicon has it right, you can actually observe "economies of scale" in the market for any type of property - typically the larger in size a property is, the less potential purchasers there are that can make maximum use of the area so the price per square foot drops. Starsfan fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 01:34
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so the current tallest building in town from what I remember is less than half that height? I feel like they should just go for 99 storeys, the costs of adding additional stories to these things once they get that tall is pretty low anyway. Wayne Gretzky Tower.
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Nov 2, 2013 10:43
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We've seen this kind of thing a couple of times lately in Fort McMurray where a Condo building was condemned or the fees jumped to thousands of dollars a month because of major structural issues and neglected repairs. In those cases the issues with the building were publically known for many years before the impact was felt. You had people buying them up for 60% of what other condo properties would achieve and then renting out the units for the same as any other older building in town was getting. These were the same people who went crying to council and the newspapers about losing their homes when the poo poo hit the fan. In summary I don't know why anyone would buy a condo. Starsfan fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 06:31
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Baronjutter posted:You see this sort of thinking a lot in 2nd hand stores. Yeah I know a guy who has let his house stand vacant since 2010 because he's listing it at something like $45,000 above the market value to break even on his initial investment. He doesn't want to rent it out and get some money back because he's retired and not in town to keep an eye on things, and he doesn't want to sell it at a loss to get out from under the mortgage payments / property taxes / whatever else. If the market does crash, I figure he'll go to his grave still waiting for the price to get back up to the level he paid back in 2008.
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Jan 18, 2014 03:55
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I've heard of some of these hotel condominiums in the mountains in Alberta where you can live / vacation in the unit for half the year, and then the other half of the year (probably the winter when people like to go to the mountains) it operates as a hotel unit. There have been all sorts of assessment review board hearings on these types of properties and how the correct way to assess and tax them (residential vs. commercial use) is. There's a financial advantage to them registering the hotel under a condominium plan, and I don't think it's even so much that they can find some idiot to share in the cost of maintaining their hotel. I've personally seen a REIT buy a property (either a "regular" hotel or an apartment building), register the condo plan, and then keep 100% ownership of the units and operate it as your typical hotel... I think it's because they can get a higher appraised value based on the inflated price of residential condominium apartment units (as opposed to the appraised value of a similar hotel based on pure investment value) and therefore borrow more money against the property. These REITs are always leveraging their properties to get more money to buy more properties. It's pretty much all they do.
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Jun 3, 2014 07:49
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Baudin posted:Or the appraisal is way off - are these located in the county by chance? I might be able to tell you more if I had an area to look into, some jurisdictions use varying approaches to value which can give a bit of variance in the appraised value. Another thing to realize is that if a property is actively used for farming purposes the standard for valuation is not always market value - In jurisdictions I'm familiar with atleast the assessment of farmland and buildings used for farming activities is regulated and there are all sorts of exemptions and non assessable components to these properties that may not translate to what they actually want for the property on the market. Also there could be potential for other uses besides farming (say a re-zoning of the property) which could influence the value to a potential purchaser in a way that is not reflected in the assessment calculation. As for your friend trying to get his assessment reduced, my experience from talking to people in res assessment is that if the property owner can provide even a couple of comparable sales at a lower level than the current assessment they get a reduction. The Assessment Review Boards see so many baseless or unsupported appeals that the first glimpse they get of a home owner who has actually put some time and effort into the process and has the ghost of an argument, they decide to reduce.
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Feb 4, 2015 02:37
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Baronjutter posted:I was just thinking of something, more of a legal/strata question, but how do you get rid of a condo building? If a developer wanted to redevelop what is currently a strata, how do they go about doing it? Do they have to buy-out every condo one at a time? Do they approach the strata and offer a deal and every single owner has to agree? Majority vote? What are the possible processes for this? I can't think of a situation where it's ever happened. I know when those condominiums in Fort McMurray basically sank into the ground and had to be demolished, there were a series of majority votes amongst the condo owners over whether the property should be sold as a vacant parcel, rebuilt into new condominium apartment units for them to own, or redeveloped into a mixed use development and then sold.. so I imagine the process would be something similar, although I'm not sure what would get the condo owners / board to the point where they agreed that it was time to re-develop in a case where it wasn't necessary to do so. **So After reading the Condominiums Act of Alberta, a special resolution is required (vote with a majority of 75% share of all condo units) to terminate the condominium status of the building and if necessary dispense of the parcel and the improvements to it through a sale. So it's not impossible to do, but it does seem to be a situation where some people could end up unhappy with the results of the vote. Starsfan fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 06:00
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Jumpingmanjim posted:How do people ITT feel about their job security in the event of a crash? I feel pretty good about the job because it's a union position in an industry that I figure should be safe from a recession (property tax assessor for the government), but then again it seems the distinguishing feature of these recessions is that a bunch of people who never see it coming and think they are perfectly safe in their positions get the axe. I guess if it happens to me atleast I have the "advantage" of not having an anchor around my neck with a mortgage for one of the $800,000 dollar homes that are so popular around here.
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Jun 18, 2015 07:32
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For what it's worth in many jurisdictions (I work in Alberta and it's the case here) the legislation stipulates that you can lose your right to appeal the assessment if you don't answer those surveys or refuse the assessor access to the property. Most people never appeal their assessments and wouldn't even care, but it is something to keep in mind. So far as relying on assessments as anything above what they are prepared for (a way to group properties into stratas for property taxation purposes) I don't recommend it. Depending on the legislation in the province (and I'm not familiar with BC so I can't comment on that case specifically) the base year for the assessment can be several years ago, and the data the assessor has on the property may be very wrong. I know I hear all the time about how in Ontario and some major cities on average it can be 15 - 20 years in between visits to a property for an assessor. Another factor is the assessment level, which again I'm not sure about BC but a provincial government can actually create a regulation which mandates that property assessments for a certain class of property are put on the roll at a percentage of full market value. Machinery and Equipment in Alberta gets this treatment, the owner only pays tax on 70% of the modified cost for the property, and I do know that other places (mostly the smaller provinces I think) do this sort of thing for residential as well. Even in a perfect world scenario the assessment value is still going to be based on 2014 sales (because assessment always trails a year behind) and the values are simply not built to do a real site specific analysis. If you were selling your house or looking to buy, you would probably look only at what the 3 or 4 other houses on that street had sold for and do a straight per unit of measurement comparison with some minor adjustments for change in market conditions over time. The assessment model probably grouped your street with every street in that neighbourhood, then grouped your neighbourhood with 3 or 4 others to come up with an overall average for that "study area", which was then adjusted by some other factors derived from a city wide analysis to get to a final value estimate. If you are looking at the real estate market, your best bet to determine the most likely value for a property as of a given time is an appraiser. It kind of boggles my mind that people don't use them more often when they are moving millions of dollars around.
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Sep 4, 2015 06:46
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HookShot posted:There was an effortpost done a while ago about how property taxes actually work, and this isnt it. A city increasing the property tax rate can increase everyone's property taxes and increase the money they get, but property values going up doesn't. well that's pretty close to accurate (assuming the city council has a revenue neutral policy as you outlined) but it's only really true in the aggregate, there can be differences in the amount of taxes paid for individual properties from year to year even if "nothing changes" for the property, depending on how the year over year change in the assessment for the individual property compares to the average year over year change for all properties in the tax class.
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Sep 4, 2015 23:15
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