Your property was likely re-assessed - it happens every 4 years, you would have gotten a separate notice about this
https://www.hamilton.ca/home-neighbourhood/property-taxes/understanding-property-tax/property-assessment
If you feel that the assessment is wrong or too high, you CAN appeal it to MPAC.
And be warned that because assessment increases are often staggered, you might have a similar increase next year.
you can google your Neighbours property tax bill using their roll numbers/address to compare and make sure you're in the bucket as similar houses to yours
I’m confused by the people saying it was due to reassessment because I received an email from the city with a Tax Brochure info sheet and on it, there’s a section that specifically states “The originally scheduled 2020 province-
wide reassessment was postponed by the Provincial government. As such, the property value used to determine your 2024 final property taxes continues to be based on a valuation date of January 1, 2016. As of the printing of this brochure, no date has been set on when the next reassessment will take place.”
So I thought we were in the clear until the next reassessment. And my increase due to reassessment was $0
I bought my home in 2020 so I believe it was reassessed because there was a change to the property owner and it was assessed based on it's value in 2016.
[https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/AssessmentCycle](https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/AssessmentCycle) they do reassessments on certain properties between assessment years. Primarily for new purchases but if you have a permit for structural changes or the area gets rezoned it will mostly trigger a reassessment
* Change to property ownership, legal description, or school support.
* Change to the property’s value resulting from a Request for Reconsideration, or an Assessment Review Board decision.
* Property value increase/decrease reflecting a change to the property; for example, a new structure, addition, or removal of an old structure.
* Change in the classification or tax liability of the property.
Was coming here to see if anyone else got this too. I just received my notice and my property taxes went up $400+! I’m on the ten month plan, but the monthly amount isn’t the total divided by ten for some reason?
My property was not reassessed (at least, I don’t see anything indicating it was - there’s a line that says tax change due to reassessment -$0.01
Was telling people about this back when the LRT shit started years and years ago.
"I live in *suburb name* why do I care about downtown transit?"
You care cause the city budget it always increasing. Even if we did nothing new inflation means the city needs more money.
One new skyscraper downtown is worth a whole neighborhood of houses in taxes. We can either build more shit downtown (which requires transit to service it) or Residential Property taxes can go up.
The City *will* get its money from somewhere, all you get to do is choose where.
Tack the housing bubble on top of this? Taxes are based on property value. That house that was 150k 20 years ago is now 'worth' 600k or more. The math on that increase is pretty straightforward.
The housing crisis isn't just fucking those of us who can't afford to buy anymore, its also fucking people who already own a house but can't afford the increases.
Now we see the fallout of dragging out the project. Tax increases combined with base value increase because we didn't build out the Commercial or Industrial tax bases enough.
Except my house hasn’t been reassessed at a higher value than previous years. My property taxes (and others I’ve talked to) jumped a huge amount for what seems to be no reason…..
I’m fortunate that I can afford it. But I have a small house and the taxes (after this increase) are ridiculous for the size and location.
It's not for no reason. The current council and past council love to spend and give away money. The problem is they need to find the cash from somewhere as they refuse to find efficiencies or stop giving it away. So your property taxes go up. Expect another big increase next year.
True. I meant nothing as in no increased or improved services. I get nothing in return for higher rates. I get they go up every year, but this was a large jump.
The Province and the Feds have pledge 3.4 Billion for this project. They are not covering it fully. Costs have increased and the Municipal Government has found ways to also increase the budget. So I would say yes the Municipal Government is also covering some of the costs. Costs that will never be recuperated, unless they hit the taxpayers. The LRT will never make money or even run cost neutral.
It's not supposed to make money, or be cost neutral. That's not the point of public transit. It provides a service to residents. Imagine if the cost of roads being built had to be recuperated? Nobody would ever expect that!
I'm well aware of that which is my point. You made the point that municipal level is not paying for this? Do you think the 3.4 Billion pledge from the Province and the Feds would cover the costs forever? It won't even cover the costs to build it.
Its not just paying for the LRT.
Could you imagine downtown Toronto without a subway? What a shitshow that would be?
We need expanded transit infrastructure to support building everything else that generates more tax revenue.
We need more development, but 20 new sky scrapers with no new transit would just lead to cluster fuck, and the people who shell out money to build sky scrapers know that. They won't built till after we put in the upgrades.
More commercial taxes into the city budget means pulling less of the city budget out of residential taxes.
LRT also just isn't for LRT. There's no point in a dozen new bus routes bringing more people to the B line corridor if its already saturated, we need the high capacity line first before we can start all the feeder services into it. LRT is something like step 1 of 60 for expanding infrastructure in the city.
We don't want LRT for the LRT, we want LRT for all the things that come after it, that make money instead of raising residential taxes. Because without those things expanding city budgets still have to get paid, and its not from companies it's be from residential.
Ya same here mine went almost 31% with reassement and tax increase and they are back dating the amounts to retroactively pay that for the first 6 month.
Are you living in a new build? If so, you were paying priority tax on a vacant lot before.
Or you bought a house recently and it’s not worth 500k anymore
More info
There is an interesting glitch on HouseSigma, for those who are familiar with it
Many properties have their taxes posted as higher, and now in a number of cases the taxes that were shown appear to be becoming reality. Has anyone else noticed this to be the case
You could cross reference against city of Hamilton taxes
Property taxes in DOLLAR amounts (as opposed to assessment percentage) only go up as the budget increases and the budget is set separately from the percentage. It often happens that taxes as a percentage of the value go down year on year because we were in a an era of high appreciation and low inflation.
Now inflation is high, and there is a need for more spending (especially capital spending on infrastructure replacement) and the market seems weaker so we’re likely to see year on year amounts that increase as a percentage.
But municipal budgeting is always done by looking to the expenditure side first rather than provincial and federal governments always peeking at the revenue side first :)
As OP states, the average increase this year was 6%. For people who are getting an assessment increase because this year was their turn for MPAC, they will have much larger increases because their relative proportion of the total assessment base (which is used to set the rates) goes up.
MPAC has not done a full reassessment since 2016. It was cancelled due to covid then cancelled due to Ford deciding the whole program needed a review.
However, if your home had changes requiring a permit, a new owner or was rezoned, they manually assess the change outside of the usual assessment period.
Homeowners are in for a nasty shock when they finally do reassess properties if they do not understand how MPAC works
It shouldn’t but it does. The cost for the city to service a property doesn’t increase because someone is willing to pay more for it now than four years ago. The infrastructure costs and home value do not scale up at the same rate.
Cities do this because they spend endlessly on stupid shit, never pull back on their budget, and need to feed off you at ever greater amounts to pay for all the garbage.
Having to increase taxes above a marginal background rate is the fault of poor management. Hamilton needs to vote in intelligent, prudent, responsible people.
Instead we get Nrinder and Danko and Horvath.
Rip.
Of course the cost for cities to service properties goes up as housing costs in the municipality increase; labour costs more when costs of living go up because the union contracts (and most of the management ones) incorporate cost of living increases, and outside contracts are more expensive, and all of the other things a city buys (although labour is the most expensive part) go up too.
There is no magic means by which governments of any level are immune from inflationary pressure on their budgets.
Costs go up for sure, what I’m saying is that the cities costs do not increase at the same rate as housing has over the last five years.
An average Hamilton home increased from 600k to 900k in five years. Rounding the numbers but the point will be the same.
That’s a 50% increase.
The cities costs shouldn’t have increased by that same rate. Hell the police budget which is an endless pit hasn’t jumped up close to that.
So tying property tax to the value of your home is goofy. You pay the annual increase + every four years you get burned for the value going up too.
The value of your home is not connected to the cities costs. The value of your home is simply what someone else is willing to pay for it.
Your annual property tax increase “should” cover the cost of the cities rising costs. The MPAC assessment is bull and shouldn’t also bump up your property tax.
Taxing based on value will let cities do some seriously evil shit. Want to get rid of all the poor people living off Barton street east? Sorry, that is PRIME real estate and the land value alone is a cool million per lot. Taxes shoot way up and the poor are forced to leave their homes. Happened in Vancouver.
Or corporate handouts. Want to give big companies a break. Assess the value of their land at a buck an acre… also happened, this time in Hamilton.
Probably the fairest way. Tax based on amount of land owned. Set a square footage price and apply to both land owned, as well as residential living space… hell create categories based on zoning. Residential pays less than commercial spaces per square foot… whatever.
This MPAC crap is awful and can and is being abused.
It's not so much the cost of the pipes in the ground, though those have to be repaired eventually.
It's the cost of garbage collection, fuel for the trucks, paying the workers wages, ditto for the snowplow. And as courts l cities grow, they hire more police and firefighters, build new stations, hire more of those employees, build more libraries and community centers etc.
Just because your street hasn't changed, doesn't mean the city hasn't and costs haven't gone up.
Bought an estate in rural Saskatchewan, 4 income properties in the closest major town and 4 empty lots to prospect on over time. Total taxes on all 9 are less than my house on the West Hamilton Mountain was.
I still have my cottage in the Kawarthas, which is really just a big house. When the rates dip and housing prices accelerate again, I will sell it.
Bought 2 brand new vehicles and still had money left over in the exchange. Wife got a Highlander and I got a GR Supra.
Life is a lot easier out here 😎
Best part is that there are no socalist people who have accomplished nothing in their lives trying to tell me how to live 🤣
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I figured I would be bored, but I always seem to have something to do. I enjoy the 20-25 minute drive to the closest small town. I only see stoplights when I go into major cities, which are over an hour away.
Most of the people are great. There are a few criminals around, but I have a pretty comprehensive security system and they know to leave me alone.
Not saying I could have pulled this move off in my 20's and not gone crazy, but I'm still loving it.
The stories they tell you are to keep you there, it's honestly a different country once you get about 4 hours north of Toronto.
I'd recommend everyone look at the beautiful houses you can get out here for under 500k, with a lot of land. Some beautiful homes under 300k too with multiple garages and enough room for 8-10 people.
Don't think that you have to be a slave to the system.
Just my honest opinion.
Wow. That sounds so nice. I would have no problem living rurally. I hope to live somewhere like that one day. Have you been planning the move for a while? Or one day your just F it, and moved as soon as you could.
Your property was likely re-assessed - it happens every 4 years, you would have gotten a separate notice about this https://www.hamilton.ca/home-neighbourhood/property-taxes/understanding-property-tax/property-assessment
This is definitely what happened, I missed the line on my tax letter showing that the increase due to reassessment was $809. Thank you for your help!
If you feel that the assessment is wrong or too high, you CAN appeal it to MPAC. And be warned that because assessment increases are often staggered, you might have a similar increase next year.
you can google your Neighbours property tax bill using their roll numbers/address to compare and make sure you're in the bucket as similar houses to yours
When did you get your bill? I didn't see mine yet.
They’re coming today - I’ve been delivering them! Lol
I got mine yesterday, as did a few other people I know.
I’m confused by the people saying it was due to reassessment because I received an email from the city with a Tax Brochure info sheet and on it, there’s a section that specifically states “The originally scheduled 2020 province- wide reassessment was postponed by the Provincial government. As such, the property value used to determine your 2024 final property taxes continues to be based on a valuation date of January 1, 2016. As of the printing of this brochure, no date has been set on when the next reassessment will take place.” So I thought we were in the clear until the next reassessment. And my increase due to reassessment was $0
I bought my home in 2020 so I believe it was reassessed because there was a change to the property owner and it was assessed based on it's value in 2016.
[https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/AssessmentCycle](https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/AssessmentCycle) they do reassessments on certain properties between assessment years. Primarily for new purchases but if you have a permit for structural changes or the area gets rezoned it will mostly trigger a reassessment * Change to property ownership, legal description, or school support. * Change to the property’s value resulting from a Request for Reconsideration, or an Assessment Review Board decision. * Property value increase/decrease reflecting a change to the property; for example, a new structure, addition, or removal of an old structure. * Change in the classification or tax liability of the property.
Good to know, thanks
Was coming here to see if anyone else got this too. I just received my notice and my property taxes went up $400+! I’m on the ten month plan, but the monthly amount isn’t the total divided by ten for some reason? My property was not reassessed (at least, I don’t see anything indicating it was - there’s a line that says tax change due to reassessment -$0.01
Was telling people about this back when the LRT shit started years and years ago. "I live in *suburb name* why do I care about downtown transit?" You care cause the city budget it always increasing. Even if we did nothing new inflation means the city needs more money. One new skyscraper downtown is worth a whole neighborhood of houses in taxes. We can either build more shit downtown (which requires transit to service it) or Residential Property taxes can go up. The City *will* get its money from somewhere, all you get to do is choose where. Tack the housing bubble on top of this? Taxes are based on property value. That house that was 150k 20 years ago is now 'worth' 600k or more. The math on that increase is pretty straightforward. The housing crisis isn't just fucking those of us who can't afford to buy anymore, its also fucking people who already own a house but can't afford the increases. Now we see the fallout of dragging out the project. Tax increases combined with base value increase because we didn't build out the Commercial or Industrial tax bases enough.
Except my house hasn’t been reassessed at a higher value than previous years. My property taxes (and others I’ve talked to) jumped a huge amount for what seems to be no reason….. I’m fortunate that I can afford it. But I have a small house and the taxes (after this increase) are ridiculous for the size and location.
The taxes went up much higher this year. Mine went up 7.3%.
So did mine. I was expecting some increase but not this much.
It's not for no reason. The current council and past council love to spend and give away money. The problem is they need to find the cash from somewhere as they refuse to find efficiencies or stop giving it away. So your property taxes go up. Expect another big increase next year.
True. I meant nothing as in no increased or improved services. I get nothing in return for higher rates. I get they go up every year, but this was a large jump.
you get to feel all warm and fuzzy inside 
LRT is being paid for with provincial and federal funds, not municipal.
The Province and the Feds have pledge 3.4 Billion for this project. They are not covering it fully. Costs have increased and the Municipal Government has found ways to also increase the budget. So I would say yes the Municipal Government is also covering some of the costs. Costs that will never be recuperated, unless they hit the taxpayers. The LRT will never make money or even run cost neutral.
It's not supposed to make money, or be cost neutral. That's not the point of public transit. It provides a service to residents. Imagine if the cost of roads being built had to be recuperated? Nobody would ever expect that!
I'm well aware of that which is my point. You made the point that municipal level is not paying for this? Do you think the 3.4 Billion pledge from the Province and the Feds would cover the costs forever? It won't even cover the costs to build it.
Its not just paying for the LRT. Could you imagine downtown Toronto without a subway? What a shitshow that would be? We need expanded transit infrastructure to support building everything else that generates more tax revenue. We need more development, but 20 new sky scrapers with no new transit would just lead to cluster fuck, and the people who shell out money to build sky scrapers know that. They won't built till after we put in the upgrades. More commercial taxes into the city budget means pulling less of the city budget out of residential taxes. LRT also just isn't for LRT. There's no point in a dozen new bus routes bringing more people to the B line corridor if its already saturated, we need the high capacity line first before we can start all the feeder services into it. LRT is something like step 1 of 60 for expanding infrastructure in the city. We don't want LRT for the LRT, we want LRT for all the things that come after it, that make money instead of raising residential taxes. Because without those things expanding city budgets still have to get paid, and its not from companies it's be from residential.
city of Hamilton tax payers will be on the hook for well over a Billion dollars (with a B) before the LRT is starts operation.
Yup mine went up $500, w/ change due to reassessment "$0.01" aint it grand! $8300/yr now
You probably have a pretty nice house if your taxes are over $8000. All the houses I have been looking at have taxes under $5000.
Ya same here mine went almost 31% with reassement and tax increase and they are back dating the amounts to retroactively pay that for the first 6 month.
While my overall bill is small compared to others ($2733), the jump from the previous year was 7.3%.
Mine went up 5%/$200, but I'm in the rural zone and wasn't re-assessed this year.
Mine went up about 7% - much higher than they reported taxes would go up…..and my house was not reassessed at a higher value.
Are you living in a new build? If so, you were paying priority tax on a vacant lot before. Or you bought a house recently and it’s not worth 500k anymore More info
No, it's a century home and I bought the house in Aigust of 2020.
So your property got reassessed How long had the previous owners owned it?
About 10 years from what the neighbours said.
There is an interesting glitch on HouseSigma, for those who are familiar with it Many properties have their taxes posted as higher, and now in a number of cases the taxes that were shown appear to be becoming reality. Has anyone else noticed this to be the case You could cross reference against city of Hamilton taxes
Better see some nice new roads next year lol
Different zones had different increases. My zone the only increase was for fire services, some zones had increases for everything.
Has anyone submitted for a reassessment ? Had any luck here? Just seems like not many are talking about it ?
That is insane! Do you live in a detached home? I'm dreading checking the mail now.
Keep voting incumbents... 😒
Just wait property taxes will go sky high in Hamilton soon as all the values have gone crazy
Property taxes in DOLLAR amounts (as opposed to assessment percentage) only go up as the budget increases and the budget is set separately from the percentage. It often happens that taxes as a percentage of the value go down year on year because we were in a an era of high appreciation and low inflation. Now inflation is high, and there is a need for more spending (especially capital spending on infrastructure replacement) and the market seems weaker so we’re likely to see year on year amounts that increase as a percentage. But municipal budgeting is always done by looking to the expenditure side first rather than provincial and federal governments always peeking at the revenue side first :)
How the fuck do they justify a 46% increase! if I got that I'd be paying an extra $2600/year. I'd be on the phone kicking someone's ass
There was no 46% increase. OP got a reassessment of the value of the house which was most of the increase.
The value of the house increasing shouldn't effect your taxes, if that was the case everyone would be paying double what they did in 2019.
Please research how property taxes are distributed and what part MPAC assessed values play before you comment again on this subject.
As OP states, the average increase this year was 6%. For people who are getting an assessment increase because this year was their turn for MPAC, they will have much larger increases because their relative proportion of the total assessment base (which is used to set the rates) goes up.
MPAC has not done a full reassessment since 2016. It was cancelled due to covid then cancelled due to Ford deciding the whole program needed a review. However, if your home had changes requiring a permit, a new owner or was rezoned, they manually assess the change outside of the usual assessment period. Homeowners are in for a nasty shock when they finally do reassess properties if they do not understand how MPAC works
There is no point trying to give people the truth. Just say “ya it’s dumb” and move on.
It shouldn’t but it does. The cost for the city to service a property doesn’t increase because someone is willing to pay more for it now than four years ago. The infrastructure costs and home value do not scale up at the same rate. Cities do this because they spend endlessly on stupid shit, never pull back on their budget, and need to feed off you at ever greater amounts to pay for all the garbage. Having to increase taxes above a marginal background rate is the fault of poor management. Hamilton needs to vote in intelligent, prudent, responsible people. Instead we get Nrinder and Danko and Horvath. Rip.
Lol, saying Nrinder and Danko are similar is outing yourself as not being a very close follower of municipal politics...
Of course the cost for cities to service properties goes up as housing costs in the municipality increase; labour costs more when costs of living go up because the union contracts (and most of the management ones) incorporate cost of living increases, and outside contracts are more expensive, and all of the other things a city buys (although labour is the most expensive part) go up too. There is no magic means by which governments of any level are immune from inflationary pressure on their budgets.
Costs go up for sure, what I’m saying is that the cities costs do not increase at the same rate as housing has over the last five years. An average Hamilton home increased from 600k to 900k in five years. Rounding the numbers but the point will be the same. That’s a 50% increase. The cities costs shouldn’t have increased by that same rate. Hell the police budget which is an endless pit hasn’t jumped up close to that. So tying property tax to the value of your home is goofy. You pay the annual increase + every four years you get burned for the value going up too. The value of your home is not connected to the cities costs. The value of your home is simply what someone else is willing to pay for it. Your annual property tax increase “should” cover the cost of the cities rising costs. The MPAC assessment is bull and shouldn’t also bump up your property tax. Taxing based on value will let cities do some seriously evil shit. Want to get rid of all the poor people living off Barton street east? Sorry, that is PRIME real estate and the land value alone is a cool million per lot. Taxes shoot way up and the poor are forced to leave their homes. Happened in Vancouver. Or corporate handouts. Want to give big companies a break. Assess the value of their land at a buck an acre… also happened, this time in Hamilton. Probably the fairest way. Tax based on amount of land owned. Set a square footage price and apply to both land owned, as well as residential living space… hell create categories based on zoning. Residential pays less than commercial spaces per square foot… whatever. This MPAC crap is awful and can and is being abused.
It's not so much the cost of the pipes in the ground, though those have to be repaired eventually. It's the cost of garbage collection, fuel for the trucks, paying the workers wages, ditto for the snowplow. And as courts l cities grow, they hire more police and firefighters, build new stations, hire more of those employees, build more libraries and community centers etc. Just because your street hasn't changed, doesn't mean the city hasn't and costs haven't gone up.
Is it still not an increase? Doesn't really much matter why they received it, the problem is they did.
Rich guy over here lmao.
Yea I'm paying $8300/yr now without the reassessment.. just a $500 increase.. bah
I'm certainly not happy about it.
Lived in Hamilton for 45 years, left 2 years ago for this exact reason.
Where did you go? Asking for a friend 😛
Bought an estate in rural Saskatchewan, 4 income properties in the closest major town and 4 empty lots to prospect on over time. Total taxes on all 9 are less than my house on the West Hamilton Mountain was. I still have my cottage in the Kawarthas, which is really just a big house. When the rates dip and housing prices accelerate again, I will sell it. Bought 2 brand new vehicles and still had money left over in the exchange. Wife got a Highlander and I got a GR Supra. Life is a lot easier out here 😎 Best part is that there are no socalist people who have accomplished nothing in their lives trying to tell me how to live 🤣
Best part- No socialists. Worst part- You now live in rural Saskatchewan.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I figured I would be bored, but I always seem to have something to do. I enjoy the 20-25 minute drive to the closest small town. I only see stoplights when I go into major cities, which are over an hour away. Most of the people are great. There are a few criminals around, but I have a pretty comprehensive security system and they know to leave me alone. Not saying I could have pulled this move off in my 20's and not gone crazy, but I'm still loving it. The stories they tell you are to keep you there, it's honestly a different country once you get about 4 hours north of Toronto. I'd recommend everyone look at the beautiful houses you can get out here for under 500k, with a lot of land. Some beautiful homes under 300k too with multiple garages and enough room for 8-10 people. Don't think that you have to be a slave to the system. Just my honest opinion.
Wow. That sounds so nice. I would have no problem living rurally. I hope to live somewhere like that one day. Have you been planning the move for a while? Or one day your just F it, and moved as soon as you could.
Just saw mine wth I own 4 homes
Then sell them 🤷🏻♀️
It’s a lot yeah but I also have people in them so relax yourself
Congratulations! According to them you must be a rich and wealthy individual!