13 February 2009

Change of use valuations - a joke?

| AG Canberra
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I have been looking at a Development Application (DA) submitted in Chisholm that includes the required valuation for changing the use clause on the lease. The DA is to create a dual occupancy on the block – current valuation $365k. If the change is approved the valuer reckons the value of the property will go up by $5000. Does this sound right? Common sense dictates that being allowed to put two dwellings on one block makes it much more valuable.

Now before you give me your answer consider this…

There is also a DA in to increase floor space (by about 400m2) in an office block on London Crt CIVIC. Coincidentally their valuation also increased 5 grand from $103,560,000 to $103,565,000! Surely being able to let a further 400m2 of space will increase the value of the property by more than 5k?

Can anyone shed light on how all this works?

Given that there is a 75% tax on the increase is the ACT being dudded out of serious revenue here?

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Hells_Bells7412:47 pm 14 Feb 09

Elena,

I think that’s a safe bet most of the time…

just can’t help but thinking they’re scamming something somehow…

I must admit I found the change of use valuation a bit odd, I remember looking at the converting the Gateway at Lyneham into 300 odd apartments and its value was only a marginal increase after.

I could only think they value it at the price of a clear block, before they build their “improvements”

Given that the 25 year commercial leases were thrown away you’d imagine improving the revenue positions without strangling development would of been a ACTGov priority.

Hopefully someone in the know might let the rest of us understand how it all works.

I’d love to see developers being held to that – i.e. only allowed to charge a total of $5k rent over, say, the next ten years.

I thought valuations were an indirect way of calculating rates, and rates are meant to pay for council services. So with dual occupancy there’d be a doubling in the use of services. $5k hardly covers that. So I’m confused too.

can someone please explain to me how it can cost $17k to put together a DA to convert carports (ie already approved structures) to garages (whacking on 2 walls/mesh dividers and a door on each one).

it is out and out discrimination against those who live in a complex – every owner has only one single carport which is being converted, if you lived on freehold land and were converting your single garage you would be exempt from a DA.

It may be that the potential to have two dwellings (or additional floor space) was already factored into the valuations, and the additional $5000 just represents the change from near-certainty to 100% certainty.

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