Dip in new property development in Newmarket not surprising: mayor

There was a $90 million drop in new assessments when compared to 2019

Newmarkettoday.ca
Dec. 18

The construction of new property developments in Newmarket took a pretty significant hit this year, with there being $90-million less in new buildings completed in 2020, but such a drop was expected because of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), which calculates the value of all properties in Ontario for tax purposes, has released the total value of new buildings that it assessed this year.

In Newmarket, there was $107,590,000 in new assessment, which is a significant drop from last year when $198,166,000-worth of new buildings were added to the town.

Mayor John Taylor said the drop is not unexpected given the year 2020 has been.

"I think it's a bit of an anomaly mostly due to COVID-19," said the mayor.

The total assessed value of all properties in Newmarket is roughly $2.1 billion, so this year's new assessment growth is around 0.5 or 0.6 per cent.

Taylor said Newmarket usually sees an assessment growth rate of about 1 per cent per year. He believes this is sustainable for a community that has taken up almost all of the available space within its boundaries.

"As we turn more toward intensification, it will have a slower growth rate than development on green fields would," he said.

"We don't want to have no growth, but we also don't want to have really high growth either. It's hard to build infrastructure such as roads and manage things from a planning perspective...so I wouldn't want to be in the top 10. If we can stay within the 1 per cent to 1.5 or 2 per cent that would be a good spot to be in."

"I think we will see ourselves back in that range next year."

A drop of new assessment value in town also means there is less new money to be collected in property taxes by municipalities, but treasurer Mike Mayes and his staff anticipated months ago that the pandemic would reduce new construction and factored it into their calculations for the 2021 budget accordingly.

The numbers released by MPAC fall well within the range the finance department had anticipated, Mayes said, so there is no cause to revisit the recently-passed budget.

"The bottom line is that this will have no impact on the 1.98 per cent property tax increase," said Mayes.

There are signs indicating that property development will make a comeback after the pandemic. Despite the slowdown in construction, Newmarket received many more planning applications this year than it did in 2019. The mayor also noted that more planning fees have been paid to the town this year than during any of the past 17 years.

"So it looks like we are looking at development in 2021 and 2022 that should be on the high end," he said.