Residents of Bromont are concerned about the meteoric rise in the property assessment of their property, which the mayor of this bucolic municipality in the Eastern Townships associates with the rapid “gentrification” of this sector which has experienced a real estate boom since the beginning of the pandemic.
In addition to Montreal, 115 cities or municipalities in Quebec will have to submit a new property assessment roll in anticipation of 2023, according to the Act respecting municipal taxation.
Several have not yet completed this accounting exercise, which is not a political decision. This is notably the case of Sorel-Tracy, which should receive in mid-November the results of a firm mandated to estimate the new property assessment in this territory. The City of Saint-Jérôme confirms that this increase will average 44% starting in 2023.
Exploding values
In Bromont, residents were warned in September: the average increase in the property value of residential properties will reach 49.6% next year. The value of some houses has increased by more than 60%, found The duty by consulting the property assessment roll of this municipality of more than 11,000 inhabitants.
“Personally, the value of my property has increased by 55%, that of my neighbor, by 80%”, confides the mayor of Bromont, Louis Villeneuve, who did not expect such “big increases” in property values. on its territory.
“We had a higher bid and, today, we are seeing the backlash of it,” added the mayor, who associates this price spike with the arrival of many residents of Montreal and the South Shore who exiled in his municipality since the start of the pandemic. It is becoming very difficult to buy in Bromont,” adds the mayor, who believes that his municipality is suffering from the “gentrification” it has suffered in recent years.
A finding shared by professor in the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and housing specialist Hélène Bélanger. “It has a perverse effect because the more the territory is attractive, the more there is pressure and the more the costs increase, and that affects land values, underlines the expert. It is a form of gentrification, indeed. »
Like Montreal, the City of Bromont plans to reduce its tax rates to cushion the increase in property values. However, it will have to take into account the high rate of inflation in the drafting of its budget, which will be adopted in December, agrees Mr. Villeneuve, which could have an effect on the municipal taxes imposed on Bromont residents.
“There is no guarantee that the taxes will not increase in a crazy way”, thus launches the resident of Bromont Julie Boucher, who feels “held hostage” after receiving a rise in the value of her property of 64 %. His home is now valued at $1,375,000.
heartbreaking choices
There is also great concern among several Bromont residents contacted by The duty. Some, like Karine Mandrea-Pelletier, have already begun to tighten their belts in fear of a substantial increase in their property taxes.
“We already have a very simple life financially and our only big expense was a car that we rented, and that we went to the garage” to buy a used car made in 2012 instead, says the mother of three. children, whose property saw a 47% increase in land value.
Sophie Saint-Michel, a mother of five children who has lived in Bromont since 2008, saw the property assessment of her house jump by nearly 73%, from $620,000 to $1,071,000. Added to this are the latest increases in mortgage interest rates, which will also affect the family’s finances in the coming months, she notes.
“We are in Bromont, we have a nice house, but we will have to cut everything else and, often, it is the children who will suffer. We are going to cut into leisure and the superfluous to be able to live in our house, ”sighs Sophie Saint-Michel.
In order to prevent real estate speculation from forcing households to leave Bromont, the mayor, Louis Villeneuve, indicates that a “summit on housing” will be held in his city over the next few months. The elected official thus wishes to stimulate the construction of affordable housing in his municipality, where they are lacking despite the proliferation of new real estate developments.
“You have to think of young people who are finishing their studies and want to come back home, of the elderly who have sold their house and want to buy here,” said the mayor. We don’t want to lose our community life. »
Real estate boom
The increases registered in the property roll of the City of Bromont echo the overheating of the real estate market that the municipality of Estrie experienced last year. An analysis published by the firm Royal LePage in December 2021 reported a 58.7% jump in one year in the median price of detached single-family homes in this sector, which has now reached $607,000.
“We hadn’t even moved in yet when people were asking us if we wanted to sell,” recalls Maxime Creton. The father of the family left Montreal in the summer of 2021 to settle in Bromont with his children in a property whose property value has increased by 56% on the new assessment roll of the municipality.
“I have a good job, but still, seriously, I can’t wait to see the impact it will have on the taxes we’ll pay,” says Mr. Creton, who is also afraid of having to make cuts “in the pleasures of life”, such as eating out and traveling abroad, if its municipal taxes increase significantly next year.
This new land role is occurring in the context of an overall slowdown in the real estate market in Quebec. In Bromont, however, despite a notable decrease in sales in recent months, an average increase in the resale prices of single-family homes and condominiums was still recorded, by 15% and 44% respectively, when we combine the last four quarters, according to the Centris platform. Price growth therefore does not seem to want to run out of steam.