New Brunswick corrects potential gap in protection for landlords, minister says

The provincial government says it has taken care of a feared gap in property tax spike protection that landlords warned would have required them to significantly hike rents in New Brunswick next year.

Apartment owners who've seen massive increases in the assessed value of their buildings will again see their taxable assessments increase by no more than 10 per cent next year, thanks to a correction to an "inadvertent" oversight in legislation that was recently passed, said Jill Green, minister responsible for housing.

The fix in legislation will mean apartment owners could potentially save millions next year under a protection that has already saved them a combined $36.4 million in deferred annual property tax payments since 2022.

However, it remains unclear whether those savings, combined with recent reductions to the property tax rate, have been felt by tenants.

"There's no guarantee that any tax abatement for landlords is going to have any impact on rents that tenants face. There's no rent control," said Matthew Hayes, spokesperson for the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights.

In light of soaring property assessment values, the province introduced a policy limiting the amount by which the taxable assessed value of apartment buildings could go up to 10 per cent starting in 2022.

The policy resulted in $9 million less in taxes paid by landlords in 2022, $11.6 million less in 2023 and $15.8 million less in 2024.

Those savings don't include reductions to the provincial portion of property taxes paid on non-owner-occupied buildings in 2022 and 2023, which would have seen some landlords pay less property taxes on their buildings in 2024 than they did in 2021.

New Brunswick Apartment Owners Association president Willy Scholten said the taxable assessed value of apartment buildings won't be going up by the average 34 to 44 per cent next year, as he'd earlier feared.

"We have avoided that major hit which would have essentially put buildings out of business," Scholten said.

However, he said apartment owners have seen on average a 64 per cent increase in the assessed value of their buildings since 2021.

Even if that increase continues to get phased in by 10 per cent annually, landlords' tax bills could still be going up every year for the next few years, he said.

Instead, Scholten said he wants to see a reduction in the provincial property tax rate that cancels out any further tax increases that would have been borne through the increased assessed values of apartments.

"So increasing [the taxable assessed value of buildings by] 10 per cent is not going to help our housing issues in the province of New Brunswick. It's going to get worse," Scholten said.