By: Zoocasa
Windsor residents pay the highest property tax rate in Ontario, according to a new report by Zoocasa, an online real estate brokerage.
Zoocasa ranked 35 cities in the province based on publicly available tax rate information, and found that Windsor, a small city in southwestern Ontario right beside the Detroit border with a population of just 233,800, pays at a rate around 1.79%.
Why are residents paying over a full percentage point higher than Toronto, which pays just 0.61%, and Milton homes for sale, which pays just 0.69%? The Windsor rate is comparable with Thunder Bay at 1.6%, Sault Ste. Marie at 1.5% and houses for sale in Oshawa at 1.34%. The main trade-off is that the city consistently has the lowest assessed property home values in the province.
“Cities with high-valued local real estate and larger populations generally have more leeway on keeping their tax rate low, as the amount collected from individual homeowners is higher to reflect real estate prices, and there are more taxpayers to contribute to the pot,” says Penelope Graham, managing editor at Zoocasa.
Zoocasa calculates that a homeowner living in Windsor would pay $5,873 more per year in tax on a home assessed at $500,000 than one in Toronto.
However, it’s important to keep average property values in mind; while it’s very challenging to find a detached house or even a larger condo in Toronto for half a million, you could buy a considerably larger, more palatial home in Windsor at the price, where the average price is $337,923. So in absolute dollars, a homeowner in Toronto, where the average home price is $915,481, would almost always paying more in property tax annually.
Since the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation judges homes every four years, the rate in Windsor may yet climb. Windsor is due to be assessed next in 2020, and property purchases prices are likely to have risen sharply, thanks to strong demand.
Interested in what homeowners in other cities are paying in tax?
Check out the full ranking in the infographic below.
Zoocasa.com is a leading real estate company that combines online search tools and a full-service brokerage to empower Canadians to buy or sell their homes faster, easier and more successfully. Home buyers can browse real estate listings on the website or the free iOS app.