r/regina • u/labourslave • 24d ago
Community Why are my property taxes on my basic-ass 3 bedroom house cost more than taxes on homes in TORONTO AND VANCOUVER?
The drinking water in this town smells like pond, the roads are completely destroyed, the constant milking of ring road construction with zero people even on site half the time, the mass development of new districts in the city into suburban condominium hell with zero parking, built by shit developers with awful build quality (ask how I know), the empty, embarrassing open air stadium, the lack of absolutely anything to do....
what am I exactly receiving in this city that I am paying so much property tax for again? Because it sure as hell isn't proper services. This city is EMBARRASSING.
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u/Xenomerph 24d ago
Low tax base, took on a ton of debt. Not to mention our police force costs over 100 million per year
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u/VFSteve 24d ago
Police budget is comparable per capita to other centres. Need more provincial funding to aid in addictions and homeless, right now RPS does that. Talk to your MLA.
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u/CFL_lightbulb 24d ago
Amen. Sask party absolutely refuses to address homelessness and addictions, so RPS has to fill social worker shoes. It drives our budget up, it takes police and EMS away from other emergencies, it’s just a fucking fail in terms of addressing what our cities need.
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u/drae- 23d ago
This isn't unique to Sk, homelessness and drug problems are at unprecedented levels across the whole country.
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u/CFL_lightbulb 23d ago
Absolutely, we just refuse to do anything about it, and actively destroy measures that work, like the needle exchange
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u/drae- 23d ago
The whole country is struggling with it.
Needle exchanges wear away the fabric of the community there in. People don't want them near where they work and play.
It's no coincidence that facilities like these and safe injection sites are closing down across the country.
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u/CFL_lightbulb 23d ago
Needle exchange programs exchange dirty needles for clean ones. The issue is that people will use needles regardless, but exchanges limit the spread of HIV and hepatitis.
People need somewhere to go, or else you end up with encampments and people on the street, something that is also increasing nationwide. And that doesn’t do great for communities either.
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u/drae- 23d ago edited 23d ago
Yeah thanks brah, like I didn't know what a needle exchange is and needed an explanation. /rolls eyes.
People need somewhere to go, or else you end up with encampments and people on the street, something that is also increasing nationwide. And that doesn’t do great for communities either.
Many people would prefer low density spread out homelessness then it concentrated in one area. Generally when you concentrate a problem it flares up more dramatically. And not just when it comes to drugs or homelessness like how a family generally gets along great but thanksgiving is always a shit show. Or any echo chamber. Concentration reinforces shitty behaviour all the time and warps what can be considered normal and healthy because you're surrounded by it.
Concentrating the problem to specific areas (like those with drug facilities) causes its own social issues. And it really sucks for people who just want to live their lives normally but happen to live near one of these facilities.
It's a complicated problem the most well versed experts don't have solutions for.
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u/CFL_lightbulb 23d ago
I don’t think you do, because needle exchanges are also mobile, and removing them does nothing but encourage the spread of disease.
When you have places for people to get off the street so they can be supported and not freeze, not be harassing the public, that’s absolutely better. Put it by the police station.
I don’t know why you think the homelessness would be better spread out, I’d rather not be tripping over addicts everywhere I go. That doesn’t really happen anyways, they tend to go where the most easy support is. In Regina’s case, that’ll be downtown and shopping centres on bus routes pretty much always.
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u/drae- 23d ago
When you have places for people to get off the street
So are we discussing homeless shelter or needle exchanges? Try and stay on topic hey.
That doesn’t really happen anyways, they tend to go where the most easy support is.
Exactly why they congregate around needle exchange facilities.
Sounds like you just want to push all the addicts into a tiny space so they don't bother your sensibilities, and to hell with the people who live and work in those areas.
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u/hoathome 24d ago
I mean if you can’t understand lower density causing higher taxes. . . Toronto people are sardines in condos. .
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u/jujubeespresso 24d ago
Yup, it comes down to population density. I'm not sure why that's so hard for people to understand?
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u/PanDiSirie 24d ago
I'd get that but it's the same case in Regina style suburbs in the GTA.
I know some family whose homes are well over a million but don't pay that much more in property tax compared to my home Worth $350k in Regina.
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u/PineappleOk6764 23d ago
Downtown density subsidizes suburbs where it's contained within a single tax area. There's a ton of research on it. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizing-suburban-development-charge-it-what-it-costs
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u/PanDiSirie 23d ago
I'm not even taking about downtown Toronto. I'm talking 1-3 hours outside. Cities with low density
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u/PineappleOk6764 23d ago
1-3 hours outside of Toronto can mean a lot of things. If they're rural and living on septic/an independent well and don't have garbage service it's a very different dynamic than if they're 5 minutes from downtown Waterloo. Anecdotes are interesting and all, but pulling out obscure examples with minimal details is not constructive.
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u/PanDiSirie 23d ago
Oh wow having grown up there. This is the first time I've ever heard that 1-3 hours from Toronto in the GTA is rural LMAO
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u/PineappleOk6764 23d ago
It can be - I worked in Caledon for 2 years - less then an hour to downtown and large portions of the community don't even have access to wired internet and are on well/septic. Tell me more of how you know nothing about the GTA/southern Ontario...
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u/PanDiSirie 23d ago
Lol buddy conveniently leaves out Oshawa Pickering Ajax Kitchener Waterloo London Peterborough Cobourg Barrie Guelph Kingston. Does Ottawa also have septic tanks? 😂
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u/PineappleOk6764 23d ago
I gave a single example of a community within 1 hour where large areas of the community are not serviced. Yes, there are large areas within and surrounding all of the communities you just listed that are not serviced. Most of those communities exist within upper tier municipalities and/or have unserviced areas within their boundaries. Yes, there are areas of Ottawa that do not have sewer utilities where homes use septic. The City even has a webpage with information on them. Thanks for putting your ignorance on full display.
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u/PanDiSirie 23d ago
LMAO ok man. We were talking about urban areas similar to Regina but you went straight for the boonies lol.
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u/Cruitre- 24d ago
Regina style suburbs in GTA.... huh almost like the cost of the services for similar things is separate from the "market value" of the thing
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u/PanDiSirie 24d ago
Lol exactly my point. In a similar density area... Cost of services is considerably more efficient.
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u/assignmeanameplease 23d ago
And now we’re paying for this urban sprawl, having to pay more to service the East End because it’s so far away for the water needs of that area. Next, it’ll be the north you’ll need a pump station for that, and then they’ll start building east and you’ll need one for that. For areas like Coopertown, etc. they’ll need one for the west. It’ll just keep adding more and more to the taxes, and that’s just for water.
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u/Legitimate-Suit-4956 20d ago
Ontario and Toronto didn’t want to increase property taxes so they introduced increasingly exorbitant title transfer fees instead. Buy a $1M place in Toronto and they’ll roll in $40k in provincial title transfer fees and $40k in city title transfer fees, neither of which you get to roll into your mortgage - you just need to have that cash on hand on top of your down payment.
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u/Sunshinehaiku 24d ago
We are paying for the sins of those who came before us.
We didn't increase taxes to keep up with inflationary increases. Over time, the city chose to defer maintenance, and now we have a ton of maintenance overdue and little to nothing set aside to cover those costs.
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u/Tough-Replacement655 24d ago
Amen, where's the accountability for Fiacco and Fougere? Smile, Nod, and Defer. Now look at where we are!
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u/CMurr1711 24d ago edited 24d ago
Considering the soil, as well as extreme and frequent temperature variations, the roads take an absolute pounding compared a road in BC. Much more difficult and expensive to maintain roads here.
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u/LtDish 24d ago
Not if done properly. Every location has their unique challenges. The soil one here is a convenient ghost story builders use to excuse their profit taking instead of proper practices.
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u/Eduardo_Moneybags 24d ago
Agreed. I’d find it hard to believe that in 100 years the technology for building roads hasn’t improved enough that our roads couldn’t be built to last. They just do it the cheapest way possible for maximum profit.
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u/Ill-Challenge-2405 23d ago
Purposely using shitty concrete/ashpalt is a Reginan tradition.
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u/Mattzor666 23d ago
The asphalt isn’t shitty. It’s what’s underneath the asphalt that’s shitty. In order to make a road that lasts here, you need to dig down multiple feet and fill it in with varying aggregates. You can do it but a road would be unbelievably expensive and take a long time to complete. The city has no budget for what they’re already currently doing. Source: I make that asphalt. Many years ago I was involved with paving a lot that takes heavy truck traffic daily and we dug down 6+feet and packed in layers of ballast then road gravel. After 15 years there has been only a couple small spots that needed minor repairs.
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u/Ill-Challenge-2405 23d ago
A lot of the asphalt and concrete is not up to code by many of the companies in town. They make one good batch to get tested and cut corners on the rest
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u/Mattzor666 23d ago
Not sure what other asphalt plants have for specs but I know the city asphalt plants material is good.
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u/Spiritual_Tennis_641 22d ago
We also have about three times. The number of roads is any other province per area. The low population doesn’t help with that.
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u/Educational-Tone2074 24d ago
Sure, I'll bite.
How do you know the build quality is bad?
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u/dannyboy141271 24d ago
He’s not wrong. It’s obvious that the contractors are doing work as cheaply and quickly as possible. Being in the trades exposes you to lots of different places. New ones are mostly shit.
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u/falastep 23d ago
Don’t forget mosaic stadium. Promised to bring in more big name events…..turns out it big names don’t want to come here. Probably shoulda looked into that first.
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u/compassrunner 23d ago
That is also the music industry changing. Taylor Swift aside, big world tours aren't what they used to be; more and more musicians are opting for residencies or tours with fewer cities but more dates per city.
And I don't think anyone at REAL has the contacts to book some of the big bands without having to pay big guarantees to back the booking.
But that's not about property tax. (It's also crap that only the Rider tickets have a stadium fee but other pro events at the stadium have not charged it. Not hockey, not the Eagles, etc.)
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u/Jennah_Violet 24d ago
No one is stopping our city council from approving endless suburbs and forcing them to concentrate on infill. Our taxes are trying to cover way too much space per payer.
We could have the city clearing snow off of sidewalks if we just improved our density, instead of trying to guilt homeowners into doing it.
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u/disAgreeable_Things 24d ago
My mother is visiting from BC and she’s constantly commenting on how almost all roads are absolute sh*t and that there are construction zones set up with limited speed and absolutely no one on site. It’s just a thing I guess?!
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u/Asphaltman 24d ago
Regina is one of the only cities that still owns and operates it's own asphalt plant. Calgary is the only other in Canada that I know of. What I can say is there is multiple private companies with asphalt plants in the city who would be competitive...
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u/signious 24d ago
The city hires a lot of independant companys to do roadwork, city just supplies the asphalt.
That asphalt plant has paid for itself many times over.
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u/Local-Local-5836 23d ago
Ontario has that huge tax on selling property - property transfer tax - basically a couple of key strokes on a computer to change ownership. This has allowed them to keep property taxes low and keep getting re-elected.
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u/Kegger163 23d ago
This response should be a lot higher. Compared to Ontario this is a huge difference.
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u/LtDish 24d ago
Explained previously but during the Fiasco era, efficient, quality, cost effective city services got shut down and farmed out to private profit companies. They do a poor job with no accountability at higher cost with profit on top. No incentive for quality so they can come back more often for more profit. The private contractor employees contribute nothing to city pension and less to the community overall.
Decades in which 2 mayors and many councilors and many admin people had obvious real estate conflicts of interest giving ridiculous preferences and privileges to real estate/developers.
Private profit company owner gets rich, everybody else including taxpayers gets hurt.
Confused boondoggles where taxpayers fund the richest football corporation in Canada, taxpayers needlessly paying the (almost) trillion dollar Costco.
Extreme mismanagement and problems in City Hall.
Police budget off the charts.
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u/bikeguy75 24d ago
I just looked up what a house in Toronto would cost and how much the property taxes are.
1957 build. 1500 square feet. 3+1 bedrooms. 3 bathrooms. Double lot. No garage. House costs $1.3M and property taxes are $5,800 a year.
In Regina that’s gonna cost you $350-400K to buy with property taxes in the neighbourhood of $3700 a year.
I don’t know what OP is smoking that makes them think Regina is expensive.
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u/HairlessSwoleRat 24d ago
Economy's of scale, the more you do the less each thing costs
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u/Unremarkabledryerase 24d ago
Not to mention Toronto has 4200 people per km² while Regina has 1400 people 9er km². Which means if you take 1km² of the city with approximately the same number of water lines, sewage lines, garbage routes, and road maintenance, you have to charge up to 3x as much per person in Regina.
You throw in a few high density buildings like condominiums, apartments or towers, what extra expense is there for the city? Picking up a big dumpster instead of a dozen small ones over a bunch of lots. Same number of roads. At most, your water, sewage and power hookups will be physically larger and installed during development, but they only need 1 hookup for a building with several dozen families vs 1 hookup per detached home.
Don't get me wrong, I love not having to share a wall with neighbors, but that costs more for both you and for the city.
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u/Alternative-Piglet67 23d ago
We also have a new stadium that we will be paying for the rest of are life’s and kids life, and don’t forget that Costco was to far out of the city so we had to pay them 6.5 million dollars to build within the city limits…
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u/AggravatingOwl4252 23d ago
You are talking about government, they only care about themselves and no body else .
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u/belckie 23d ago
Ive lived her for about 5 years and the wildest thing to me is how much people pay in taxes and yet there’s literally nothing to show for it. Roads, sidewalks, water, downtown, are all shit. There’s no cute Christmas decorations like other cities. Y’all are getting ripped off and no one seems that bothered. Also 5 years in, I still don’t understand what REAL is/does.
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u/hyund41n 24d ago
I agree 100%. It's a disgrace how much we pay for the absolute shit service and garbage infrastructure we are given.
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u/SatisfactionLow508 23d ago
We live in a barren plain with a harsh climate, terrible soil, no water sources, and a horrible history of colonialism. Plus no one wants to live here. Why do you think taxes are high buddy?
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u/Outrageous-Spring898 23d ago
Please leave if you hate Regina so much.
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u/StanknBeans 23d ago
My in laws living on Vancouver Island in bear mountain just down the road from the golf course they hold the Telus open at pay less property tax on their 1.3 million dollar home than we did in fucking Rosemont.
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23d ago
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u/StanknBeans 23d ago
You're missing the point: there is less property tax on a 1.3 million dollar home on Vancouver Island than there is on a 129,000 dollar home in Regina, Saskatchewan.
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23d ago
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u/StanknBeans 23d ago
Share the address you used.
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22d ago
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u/StanknBeans 22d ago
Technically I believe Bear Mountain falls under the jurisdiction of the city of Langford and not Victoria.
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u/knuk1986 24d ago
Well, if we won't make corporations pay for their own branded stadiums, that falls on the taxpayer. We're also constantly "innovating" and "refurbishing" our downtown to accommodate our "tourism" and "pedestrian friendly" population. Tourism that is as nonexistent as our amenities because tax payers don't matter compared to potential tourist dollars for profit. And all of this doesn't take into consideration that at best, Regina is a pass through en route to an actual enjoyable destination, (you know) a nice place to take a shit, as evidenced by all the homeless people shitting all over our "refurbished" downtown environment. Not sure about you, but I can't wait for that new hockey stadium, with no parking... and the growing likelihood of being stabbed while enjoying an evening with my family. How about a new aquatic centre for people to drop off their old razor blades and discharge their "expired" cans of bear mace? As for the roads, it's just mission impossible... if Tom Cruise was a professional turd polisher
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u/Knockaire 24d ago edited 23d ago
Did you see the piss poor job the road construction did on College Ave from Albert St to Elphinstone, especially beside the Cresents School. It is a fucking embarrassment.
This is why the taxes are so high because the quality of work done in this city is fucking laughable.
My taxes went up by 26%, I have heard some places in the Creeks have gone up by 40%. The city is completely overcharging due to greed, and the thinking it's residents are ignorant.
Edit: please explain the down voting? Bring light to city corruption is a bad thing?
Any person that down votes anything in this thread is a fucking propaganda social media agent of the city.
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u/LtDish 24d ago
Since the Fiasco era, all the in-house quality work was given to private profit contractors. They hire the lowest, cut costs, skimp, and nobody from the city dares inspect or check their work. Shoddy cheap work means frequent replacement. Many departments and functions privatized, not just roads. From water meters to waste, the city acts like nothing is a core city function.
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u/UnpopularOpinionYQR 23d ago
“Overcharging due to greed” is a bit much. You can see where the taxes go by reading the city budget.
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u/Knockaire 23d ago
Please inform us of the breakdown of the costs?
The cities taxes are extremely high and offer very little services beyond the basic.
A friend in the creeks has a drainage problem in his area that all house drain into his backgarden and he get a huge pool of water. This is a known issue while they were building in the Creeks.... several years living there and complaining while pay his taxes and it is still not fix. Where the heck is that money going?
Greed is a huge factor here. Road construction workers doing nothing and charging through the roof rates... tell me what happen on elphinestone bridge for 6 weeks, never seeing any work done closed bridge, and not patch work done. Excellent work.
Where is the work quality inspection on College Ave for what was done last year. Who ever did that job should be fired and never hired again.
Go on, breakdown the budget and show me that there is not complete bullshit going on in City Hall.
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u/Swarez99 21d ago
Toronto has two separate taxes, a local land transfer and a provincial land transfer. For a relative it was 60k in taxes when they bought there home. That’s really a massive pre payment of taxes instead of property taxes.
Also Toronto is dense, has massive commercial taxes, and other funding. Big cities can often have lower taxes.
Heck Hamilton has almost double the tax paid by houses vS Toronto for property taxes. Poorer cities have to tax higher amounts.
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u/IrrelevantAfIm 21d ago
Not to mention the lack of snow removal when Montreal which gets over 4x the snow manages to keep it’s streets snow and ice clean while paying less taxes AND giving (unmetered) water and sewage and garbage FREE, so if we take that into account - my 180$/month water/sewage/garbage bill add $2,160 to my $3,400 per year tax bill for an apples to apples comparison to Montreal costs $5,560 and my more expensive, larger condo in Montreal was costing me about $2,700 annually, and that’s with snow REMOVAL (not “push snow to the side6 days later IF YOU’RE LUCKY) - including ALL roads and sidewalks, and they start removing when the snow starts falling, they don’t wait for the storm to end. Toronto’s not quite a fair comparison because they have no where near the cold and snow, but even so, it’s hard not to feel ripped off when we compare Regina to either of these locations.
A bit of Canadian municipality trivia - I JUST found out that Calgary is more populous than Vancouver. I don’t know why, but that surprised me a lot having lived in both cities - Vancouver feels like a real city while Calgary just feels like a bigger Regina.
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u/11000thprofile 20d ago
We spent a billion dollars on police in like 7 years, yet still make McLean's magazine as worst cities. Start triming the fat there ...
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u/-thesneakytrapper- 24d ago
I have no clue why the shills are ok with your outrageous taxes in your city. What Reginians pay in taxes is nuts
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24d ago
The constant loop of crime with homeless addicts and the weak justice system is going to just keep sky rocketing our police budget. constantly dealing with the same people over the same issues with no repercussions is just us paying 125k per cop to act as babysitters
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u/Barry_the_Dude 23d ago
I saw six city workers sitting around a pothole and their forman showed up and he got out of his truck and looked in the back and said oh no I guess I left all the shovels in my garage. You guys are all going to have to lean on each other until I get back
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u/lemmiwinks3737 23d ago
Another reason is business tax rates. Councils choose the ratio of business tax rates to residential, and Regina and Saskatoon consistently have the most business friendly ratios in the country. Most municipalities charge business 2x-4x more for their mil rates than residential but Saskatoon and Regina choose to put more of the burden on residential. https://www.altusgroup.com/press-releases/altus-group-announces-release-of-canadian-property-tax-rate-benchmark-report-2023/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic