N.B. homeowners receive property assessments, face potentially larger tax bills

Aubrey O'Neill says he was shocked when he received his property assessment notice in the mail this week.

The Moncton, N.B., man said the value of his house in the north end of the city jumped over 20 per cent. 

"Now my property taxes will probably increase by that amount. I'm paying more in property taxes than I've ever paid in a mortgage," he said.

O'Neill is a senior on a fixed income and is concerned he might have to sell his retirement home because he can't afford to pay the property tax for it.

"You work all your life to get a home of your dreams, you get it, you retire and now the property taxes are going to take it away from you," said O'Neill. 

On Monday, the province announced over 477,000 property assessment notices for 2023 had been sent to property owners.

The total value of property assessments is $81 billion, an increase of almost 11 per cent. 

The $81 billion increase is mainly due to New Brunswick's strong real estate market and new construction projects.

In a news release, Service New Brunswick Minister Mary Wilson said the province is also going through a population growth.

"Local governments will need to take these assessment increases into consideration when setting their property tax rates for next year,” said Wilson.

Daniel Allain, the minister of local government and local governance reform, said the assessments have increased a bit in certain municipalities and a lot in others.

"So, we're asking them to take their time to make sure to determine what services they want to give New Brunswickers and actually tax it appropriately," said Allain.

The City of Moncton is definitely considering lowering their tax rate next year according to Jacques Doucet, the general manager of finance.

"We're going to need to look at all of our corporate pressures and all the requests we've had to deal with inflation and so on. And from there, that will determine the revenues we need to operate the city and from there we will be able to determine the tax rate we need to get that revenue," said Doucet.

The Town of Riverview is about to enter into its budget deliberations and Mayor Andrew LeBlanc said they will consider everything when it comes to lowering property taxes.

"We know last year we lost $1.1 million in our equalization grant from the province. Things like that have a big impact on the overall sustainability of our budget and we know there's going to be some proposed increases for RCMP. Inflation has hit us really big, as it has with every municipality for capital projects, so there's a lot of things we have to factor into these discussions," said LeBlanc.

The province has a spike protection mechanism for most property owners that have an assessment increase greater than 10 per cent. That protects homeowners from significant one-year increases.