ANTIGONISH COUNTY: Property Valuation Services Corporation (PVSC) representatives say the residential property assessments in Antigonish County have gone up 16.2 per cent since last year’s assessments.
PVSC Assistant Director Adam Hanna made the presentation to the Municipality of the County of Antigonish during their regular monthly council meeting on Jan. 10, highlighting the increase accounts for an additional $250,687,000 in assessments.
Hanna advised the organization issued the 2023 property assessment notices on Jan. 9, and should a property owner disagree with their assessment, they have until Feb. 9 to file an appeal with PVSC
“The 2023 assessments represent the physical state of the property as Dec. 1, 2022,” he said. “Property owners should start receiving them in the mail; we started getting calls on them today.”
Hanna also highlighted the total commercial assessment within the county as being $215,194,800 which is an almost 4 per cent increase from last year.
Speaking on the assessment role activity in 2022, he explained there were 244 permit reviews, 929 property transactions, and 167 appeals filed.
Following the meeting, Warden Owen McCarron told reporters that they encourage all their residents, who will start to receive notices in the next couple of days, to check if their notice reflects what they feel is a fair assessment for their property.
“If you don’t feel it’s fair, it’s important you contact PVSC on that before Feb. 9 , and that has to be faxed, emailed, or mailed, but your appeal has to be signed,” McCarron said. “Every year, we encourage people to take a look, sometimes forestry properties go into just resource and that gets missed.”
The warden explained after Feb. 9, PVSC doesn’t have any ability to change the assessment.
“PVSC sets the assessment values for all properties across the province, there’s over 630,000 notices that go out each year to residents throughout the province of Nova Scotia,” McCarron said. “They set the values and then we set a tax rate based on the assessment values PVSC put out to us.”
With an increase in assessments throughout the county, just north of $250,000,000, he suggested the significant increase reflects what people have seen and heard in the media over the last couple years, in terms of market value and a lot of properties changing hands.
“I think since COVID, we’ve seen an influx of people coming into our community, and a lot of real estate sales, so not shocking to be that kind of increase in our area,” McCarron said. “I think it just underscores the sentiment there around real estate and it’s been a hot real estate market for the last couple years, and where that goes going forward, I guess only time will tell.”
Residents who have concerns over their assessment notices or questions are asked to contact PVSC; assessors are available Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., by calling 1-800-380-7775 or by emailing: inquiry@pvsc.ca.