How I Saved Thousands on Property Tax

From the Mak Family…

My son, NTM, just started Grade 8!

He’s excited to be the top grade at the school and it will be interesting how next year pans out when he starts high school.

The first day of school also coincides with his birthday, so there’s an official teenager in the house!

He’s now wearing size 10.5 shoes, which is about 2 sizes higher than me, so we’re all hoping he’s going to be tall.

For the Fall, he decided to slow down on the ping pong and soccer, and chose to work on badminton instead.

As he grows into a teenager, we really cherish the family time we have together before he becomes a lot more independent.

The days are long, but the years are short!

How I Saved Thousands on Property Tax

These are the new increases in property taxes for 2024:

Toronto (+9.5)
Mississauga (+7.2%)
Oakville (+4.38%)
Markham (+2.99%)
Vaughan (+3.0%)

So anything that helps with this additional cost is always welcomed.

I found two methods that will save our family thousands over the next few years and I hope you will too!

TRIANGLE CARD

First off, I would recommend looking at the Canadian Tire Triangle  World Elite Mastercard because it is truly special!

You can earn 3% on groceries and 1% on everything else.

But did you know you could use the card to pay for utilities?

This means you can use it to pay companies like Enbridge or Alectra and even pay the city for waste-water or property taxes!

It’s paid in Canadian-Tire money and not actual cash, but it’s still very useful.

MPAC RE-ASSESSMENT

The other method that we used was to get our home re-evaluated.

To figure out your property taxes, the formula is:

Property taxes = MILL RATE x Assessed Value

The MILL RATE is fixed, so, if you can reduce your assessed value, your property taxes go down.

There are some companies that help you to do this, but I know of many people, including myself, who just did it myself.

You’ll need to “make a case” to MPAC on why your home is over-valued compared with your neighbours, but it is worth it if you can!

I think this is harder for properties like condos that are very uniform, but if you have a unique, detached home, there’s more room for the value to change.

Using these two methods, you can probably save hundreds if not thousands over the next few years.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Still a Stalemate!

In August 2024, the average home sold for $1,074,425. This is down -2.91% from last month and down -0.7% from last year. There were 4,975  sales in August which is -5.26% lower than in 2023.

It’s been a strange market out there.

After the third -0.25% rate-drop in September and a -0.50% drop in the US, everyone was expecting a lot more activity!

Sellers aren’t desperate enough to drop their prices, despite a crazy number of listings out there.

Buyers aren’t desperate enough to give the Sellers more, even though they can afford more and can choose the property they want.

It’s just a waiting game and we’ll see which side blinks first.

Downtown condos have been a bloodbath!  Since April, the average price for condos have dropped an average of $85k!

It’s a great time to BUY condos because there are so many owners and investors who want to sell. Rental rates dropped in Q2 compared with the previous year.  We won’t know the Q3 numbers for another few weeks.

Let’s see if the expected interest rate cuts in October help stabilize the market.

Is it the right time to buy or sell?
Call me at (416) 276-4895 and let’s have a chat!

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