Tribunals Ontario

Tribunaux décisionnels Ontario

Assessment Review Board

Commission de révision de l’évaluation foncière

ISSUE DATE: February 16, 2022

FILE NO.: WR 176442

Assessed Persons: Brian Luborsky; Karen Luborsky

Appellant: Karen Luborsky

Respondent: Municipal Property Assessment Corporation Region 09

Respondent: City of Toronto

Property Location: 91 Old Colony Road

Municipality: City of Toronto

Roll Number: 1908-082-191-06300-0000

Appeal Numbers: 3435333 and 3440610

Taxation Years: 2020 and 2021

Hearing Event No.: 756287

Legislative Authority: Section 40 of the Assessment Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. A.31

APPEARANCES:

Parties	Representative
Brian Luborsky; Karen Luborsky	Surin Toor
Municipal Property Assessment Corporation	Carlo Bassi
City of Toronto	No one appeared

HEARD: February 09, 2022 by telephone conference call

ADJUDICATOR: Jean-Paul Pilon, Member

DECISION

OVERVIEW

1Karen Luborsky and Brian Luborsky (the “Appellants”) are the owners of a property at 91 Old Colony Road in Toronto (the “Subject Property”). They appealed the assessments of the Subject Property for the 2020 and 2021 taxation years.

Background

2The Subject Property is a single-family dwelling in the York Mills neighbourhood in the north end of Toronto. It was not disputed that the Subject Property is of substantial size and superior quality.

3The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (“MPAC”) returned an assessed value of $9,637,000 of the Subject Property for the 2020 and 2021 taxation years. It argued at the hearing that this assessment should be confirmed, even though its evidence supported a current value of $12,306,327 or $11,186,451 after an equitable adjustment described below.

4The Appellants’ position at the hearing was that the assessment should be reduced to $7,660,811 or $6,963,677 after the same equitable adjustment.

5The City of Toronto did not participate in these appeals.

Area of Agreement

6After determining the current value of the Subject Property pursuant to section 44(3)(a) of the Assessment Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. A.31 (the “Act”), section 44(3)(b) of the Act directs the Assessment Review Board (the “Board”) to “adjust the assessment of the land to make it equitable with that of similar lands in the vicinity if such an adjustment would result in a reduction of the assessment of the land.”

7On this issue, the parties agreed that based on an assessment-to-sales ratio (“ASR”) of 0.909, the Board’s determination of current value should be correspondingly adjusted by reducing the current value of the Subject Property by 9.1%.

Issues for the Hearing

8The single issue to be determined in this proceeding is therefore the current value of the Subject Property.

Result

9The returned assessment of $9,637,000 is confirmed.

ANALYSIS

Description of Subject Property

10The Subject Property has effective site area of 38,506 square feet (“sq. ft.) and abuts an educational institution that was not identified at the hearing. The building on the Subject Property was built in 2000 and was assigned a quality of construction of 10 by MPAC, its highest rating.

11The Subject Property has two storeys, includes the building that has an area of 13,479 sq. ft., and it includes an indoor pool and attached garage. There was a sale of the Subject Property in 2009 and it was listed for sale in 2019, but it was then withdrawn from the market. The Board finds neither of these facts to be relevant to the task of determining current value given that neither event was close to the valuation date of January 1, 2016.

Issue – What is the current value of the Subject Property?

12The direct comparison approach is the appropriate method of determining current value in this instance and, to that end, both parties submitted evidence relating to comparable properties.

13MPAC made reference to eighteen comparable properties that had transacted in its evidence, but relied on only three of those properties. In their evidence, the Appellants relied on four comparable properties. Only one comparable property was in the evidence of both parties at the hearing but that property was not among the three upon which MPAC primarily relied at the hearing.

Adjustments

14Both parties’ comparable properties were adjusted to account for the passage of time before and after the valuation date of January 1, 2016.

15MPAC adjusted for time using its time adjustment study that considered the sales of 362 properties in, to quote from its Valuation Report, “the Subject Property’s neighbourhood and adjacent areas” between 2014 and 2016 inclusive. The Appellants adjusted for time based on a document entitled “Focus on the MLS Home Price Index” for the neighbourhood in which the Subject Property is located.

16The significant difference between these two approaches was that MPAC adjusted on a month-to-month basis, while the Appellants’ document adjusted on an annual basis. Since the Board accepts the Appellants’ argument in this instance that considering sales outside of the shoulder years (2015 and 2016) might introduce inaccuracies, its finds the preferable approach to be in the more detailed study relied upon by MPAC.

17MPAC also made adjustments for features affecting some of its comparable properties. Only one of these was relevant in the analysis below: an adjustment of 10% upward for a property at 194 Roxborough Drive which abuts a ravine.

18The Appellants relied on a property at 6 Hyde Park Circle with a notation on its spreadsheet reading “prox to education” but, unlike with their other comparable properties, the Appellants proposed no specific adjustment to be made.

Relevant Comparable Properties: MPAC

19MPAC placed substantial reliance at the hearing on three of its comparable properties: 194 Roxborough Drive, 12 The Bridle Path and 37 The Bridle Path. It used the median of the time and feature adjusted per sq. ft. values for each these three properties to arrive at its conclusion of the current value of the Subject Property.

20The Board finds that all of the rest of MPAC’s comparable properties, upon which MPAC did not place substantial reliance at the hearing, are so vastly different from the Subject Property that they were not useful in the analysis.

21One of the remaining three, 37 The Bridle Path, is excluded from the analysis because it transacted outside of the shoulder years before and after the valuation date, leaving MPAC with two comparable properties.

22194 Roxborough Drive is 8.2 kilometers (“km”) from the Subject Property and, as indicated above, abuts a ravine. It has three-quarters of the land of the Subject Property but was built 10 years later. Like all of MPAC’s comparable properties, it has a quality rating of 10. Its building area is comparable to the Subject Property and it has similar secondary structures. MPAC calculated the adjusted per sq. ft. value of this property to be $913.

23The Board considers this property to be, on balance, superior to the Subject Property due to its proximity to a ravine and its date of construction, despite the smaller size of its building.

2412 The Bridle Path is 2.14 km from the Subject Property. It also has roughly three-quarters of the land of the Subject Property but its building is newer, built in 2009. The size of that building is similar to the Subject Property and it has similar secondary structures. MPAC calculated the adjusted per sq. ft. value of this property to be $860.

25The Board considers this property to be, on balance, relatively comparable to the Subject Property balancing the later date of construction and smaller size of its building. It may well be that The Bridle Path is a better neighbourhood than that in which the Subject Property is located, as argued by the Appellants, but given the grandeur of the Subject Property and the vagueness of the evidence at the hearing on noise from the 401, the Board does not place weight on that submission.

Relevant Comparable Properties: Appellants

26Two of the Appellants’ four comparable properties transacted in 2014, outside of the shoulder years, and are therefore excluded from the analysis.

2726 Old Colony Rd. was also in MPAC’s evidence but was not included in the four upon which MPAC relied at the hearing. It is only 0.6 km from the Subject Property and was built in 2000, the same year as the building on the Subject Property. However, in terms of land and building area it is quite different, with roughly two-thirds of the land and a building of just over half the size of the Subject Property. It also has no pool like the other remaining comparable properties. MPAC calculated the adjusted per sq. ft. value of this property to be $709.

28The Board considers this property to be inferior to the Subject Property.

29The only other property relied upon by the Appellants was 6 Hyde Park Circle. This property has a lower quality rating of 9 but has a very similar land area to the Subject Property. However, its building is 30% smaller than the one on the Subject Property.

30The Board considers this property to also be inferior to the Subject Property. Using MPAC’s time adjustment chart, the adjusted per sq. ft value of this property is $566.

Other Considerations

31The Appellants’ representative argued that MPAC relied on properties too distant from the Subject Property. However, the Subject Property is unique and, as shown above in the analysis of the most comparable properties in evidence, there were few comparable properties that had been the subject of transactions to choose from. The Board therefore determines it to be acceptable to look farther afield for comparable properties in these circumstances.

32The Appellants’ representative also correctly noted at the hearing that some of the comparable properties were substantially underassessed. He argued that the Board should take into account that substantial underassessment in determining the current value of the Subject Property by effectively applying reverse assessment-to-sales ratios exceeding 1.

33The Board has two tasks set out in section 44(3) of the Act: to determine current value and then to make apply an equitable adjustment if required pursuant to section 44(3)(b) of the Act. Assessments are not generally relevant in the determination of current value because the entire point of the exercise is “determining the value at which any land shall be assessed” pursuant to section 44(3) of the Act. The Board finds that consideration of other assessments in determining current value is circular, self-perpetuating and illogical, particularly where the statute directs the Board to determine the equity of assessments in section 44(3)(b). That approach is therefore rejected.

Determination of Current Value

34The Board determined above that 194 Roxborough Drive, at $913 per sq. ft., is superior to the Subject Property. It found 12 The Bridal Path, at $860 per sq. ft., to be relatively comparable to the Subject Property. It found both 26 Old Colony Road at $709 per sq. ft. and 6 Hyde Park Circle at $566 per sq. ft. to be inferior to the Subject Property.

35The Board finds the most logical approach in these circumstances is to determine the mean of three per sq. ft. values: the mean per sq. ft. value of the two inferior properties ($637.50), the per sq. ft value of the relatively comparable property ($860) and the value of the superior property ($913).

36The result is $803.50 per sq. ft. which, when multiplied by the square footage of the Subject Property (13,479 sq. ft.), results in a current value of the Subject Property of $10,830,376.

Findings

37The correct current value of the Subject Property is $10,830,376.

38The parties agreed to apply an ASR of 0.909 to the Board’s determination of current value to adjust for equity. Therefore, the adjusted current value of the Subject Property is $9,844,812.

39MPAC returned an assessment of $9,637,000 for the Subject Property which is reasonably close to the Board’s determination of current value adjusted for equity.

40As a result, the Board confirms the assessment of the Subject Property.

CONCLUSION

41The Board finds that the assessed value of the Subject Property is confirmed.

ORDER

42The Board orders that the assessed value of 91 Old Colony Road in Toronto of $9,637,000 in the residential property class for the 2020 and 2021 taxation years is confirmed.