Property taxes: the real rate, city by city

The residential rate and the bill on a $500,000 assessment

Ranked from highest to lowest rate. The "bill" column applies the rate to an identical assessed value of $500,000 to make cities comparable — it is not a real bill, but a constant-value benchmark.

51 city(ies) published of the 63 covered by our price dossiers. 12 still to collect — a city appears only once its rate is verified at its official source.

The trap: the rate does not apply to the sale price

This rate applies to the municipal assessed value, which is not the market price: in many cities the assessment lags sales by two or three years. Applied to today's sale price, the calculation therefore overstates the real bill.

This is the most common error when comparing two cities: a high rate on low assessments can cost less than a modest rate on up-to-date ones. To know what you will actually pay, you need the rate and the property's assessment — the subject of our dossier on municipal assessment versus market value.

A second nuance: depending on the province, the published rate does or does not include the education portion, and some cities add area levies (water, transit, borough). The "as published" column lets you check what we recorded, and the official source lets you cross-check everything.

What it is actually for

Property taxes are the most underestimated recurring cost of buying. They enter your borrowing capacity (the GDS ratio counts them), the income needed to qualify, and the rent-versus-buy comparison — three dossiers where they weigh every month, not just at purchase.

Until now, those calculations rested on a published assumption — 1% of value per year — for lack of anything better. This table exists to replace it with real rates, city by city, as collection advances.

Method

• Single source: the city itself. Every rate comes from the municipality's official site (tax bylaw, budget, "property taxes" page), not an aggregator. The exact URL is published beside each row.
• Conversion to a common unit. Cities publish in "$ per $100", "$ per $1,000", mills or percentages. Everything is converted to a percentage of assessed value, and the original figure stays visible so the conversion can be checked.
• The base residential rate. Where a city publishes several residential rates (areas, boroughs, with or without water service), we take the most general one and say so.
• Nothing is estimated. A city whose rate was not found, or whose budget is not yet adopted, does not appear. The coverage counter says how many are missing.
• Regeneration. The table is rebuilt at every build from verified data (last generated: July 30, 2026). Rates change once a year with the municipal budget: each row carries its tax year and verification date.

Frequently asked questions