It is that awful time of year again, the time of year when your property tax statement arrives in the mail. Home ownership is not cheap, and you can add the cost of taxes to the cost of mortgages. Toronto residents, and those in Guelph ON as well, often opt to have their property taxes included in their monthly mortgage payments. That way, they don't have to worry about saving up a bunch of money when the statement comes in.
We recommend saving up rather than attaching property tax payments on to your mortgage. You just end up paying more interest, and you are really only giving extra money to the bank or your lender. This is true for Sutton reality mortgages as well as others.
Many people don't understand just how property taxes are calculated. If you have spent your whole life in one city and recently moved to Guelph, or made the move from Guelph to Toronto, you might be surprised at the huge disparity between what you have to pay in taxes on Yorkville condos and what you pay for a Guelph single family dwelling.
Each city has its own method of calculating property taxes, and that is why you will see that difference in taxes between larger and smaller locales. Unfortunately, if you live in the city of Toronto, you are being tagged with the highest property taxes in the entire nation.
The argument goes that larger cities provide more services to more people, and that is why they need to charge higher property taxes. That argument is valid, but it can really only go so far in justifying the taxes levied by the city. Many reports state that larger municipalities seem particularly apt to bad spending habits, thus the reason for the continued increase in property taxes over the years.
Of course, the next argument on the city's side is that houses and property in big cities also go up in value, and in Toronto they may do so quite drastically, from year to year. People can make a good profit buying then selling power of sale properties in Mississauga and other large Ontario cities, and property tax statements are merely a reflection of that fact.
So that's why property taxes are so different from one city to another. If you aren't happy with what you are paying in Guelph, you may want to take a look at what your neighbours in Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, and Brampton.
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