Property assessments rise again but there may be 'touch of relief,' expert says

A New Brunswick data analyst says property assessments are up again, but not by as much as they jumped in recent years.

Ray Harris of DataWazo has crunched the latest numbers from the provincial government, which are publicly available online and included in assessment notices that have started arriving in mailboxes.

People can expect to see "huge" assessed values again, but a touch of relief in year-over-year growth, which had been charting like "a straight upwards hockey stick" since 2020, he said.

"We're all paying more, but we're all seeing a much smaller increase than both 2024 and 2023."

Things seem to be starting to calm down a bit in some areas, said Harris.

In Moncton, for example, the year-over-year growth in median assessed residential values is 12 per cent, said Harris. 

That compares to 17 per cent last year, 24 per cent the year before and 18 per cent in 2018, he said.

Harris's figures, which exclude apartments, are estimates as it's difficult to hone in on residential properties because they are defined in many different ways, he said.

In Fredericton, he calculated the year-over-year growth in median assessed home values at 6 per cent — down from 15 last year.

In Saint John, he said median assessed residential property values are up 4 per cent. That compares to a 20 per cent jump last year.

Sussex's median assessed values are also up 4 per cent, according to Harris, which was an even bigger drop, from last year's 24 per cent.

Sussex Mayor Marc Thorne said he was "happy to see the assessment jumps cool down."

"Most homeowners have no intention of selling their homes and any increase in assessed value … simply means paying more taxes in an already stressed economy," he said.

Thorne said he thinks statistics are showing that Service New Brunswick was aggressive in adjusting assessed values for the pandemic effect of home prices being driven up as people moved in from out-of-province. 

Now, he said, assessments and market prices are "pretty much aligned."

He noted his community is still experiencing "strong" residential growth, with homes selling within days and apartment vacancies near zero. 

The overall residential tax base grew by over 11 per cent in the last year, Thorne said.

Very few New Brunswick communities saw higher year-over-year growth rates in their median assessed residential property values, said Harris. 

The biggest jumps he noted are in Arcadia, which went from 7 to 21 per cent, and New Maryland, which went from 9 to 19 per cent.

The highest year-over-year growth in median assessed residential assessments are in Grand Lake at 29.04 per cent, said Harris. The lowest was St-Quentin at 0.55 per cent.

Harris has uploaded the province's fresh data on property assessments into an interactive map he created last year at his datawazo website.

It allows the user easily see information about assessments for an individual address and other residential properties within a radius of one to five kilometres.

It lets people see if they're being disproportionately assessed, which was missing in previously existing tools, he said.

That's handy for insight "and anger generation," said Jerry Iwanus, a former assessor and author of Taxing New Brunswick: An Insider's Guide to Successfully Challenging Your NB Property Assessment.

If an assessment is out-of-whack, that's grounds for appeal in most other jurisdictions, but not in New Brunswick, he said.

"The only reasons to challenge your assessment is if you believe the assessed value to be higher than what your house would sell for or because you don't believe that the assessed value takes into consideration deficiencies about your property that are unknown to the assessor," said Iwanus.

He also wants to counter what he sees as another common misconception.

"Taxes don't go up because assessments do," he said. "Taxes go up because politicians have decided to spend more."