The Victoria land share — second city measured

2026-07-18 · wave 19 · ESTIMATE lane, deepening mode · tests whether Vancouver's measured land share (w9) generalizes.

What was measured

City of Victoria publishes its full 2026 assessment roll as open data (ArcGIS service, ~33,700 folios; the layer carries each folio under both General and School valuation bases — ratios are unaffected, counts below use the roll rows). Aggregates via the service's statistics API, retrieved 2026-07-18:

Segment Land value Improvements Land share
Non-strata ("LAND" legal type) $39.7B $21.5B 64.9%
Strata $21.6B $5.7B 79.2%
City-wide $61.5B $27.3B 69.2%

What it means

  1. Heterogeneity is real. Victoria's non-strata share (65%) sits ten points below Vancouver's (74.8%, w9) — metro land shares are city-specific, not a universal constant. The original 60–80% metro band (w8) is vindicated as a band; Vancouver sits at its top, Victoria in its middle.
  2. The incidence machinery holds. Victoria's median all-types property (CHSP: $305k per-capita provincial context; city medians below Vancouver's) times a ~65–69% share keeps typical Victoria households well below the $456k crossover — consistent with the w3/w8 conclusion that outside Metro Vancouver's detached stock, BC households are predominantly net recipients individually.
  3. Strata shares are high in both cities (76% Vancouver, 79% Victoria) — BC Assessment allocates generously to land under condos — but per-unit values keep condo households on the receiving side.
  4. Method note for the Q2 study: use city-specific land shares from rolls where published (BC, Quebec), and the 60–80% band elsewhere, rather than any single-city figure.

Queued next

Montreal's full roll (unites-evaluation-fonciere, open CSV with per-unit terrain/bâtiment values) — the first non-BC parcel measurement and a different assessment regime; larger download, queued for a dedicated wave.

Sources

  1. City of Victoria Open Data, "Property Assessment Report 2026" (ArcGIS FeatureServer, fields land_gross/impr_gross/LEGAL_TYPE), statistics queries retrieved 2026-07-18. https://opendata.victoria.ca/datasets/VicMap::property-assessment-report-2026
  2. Vancouver comparison: analysis/vancouver-land-share.md (w9).

Groundshare — a proposal in open development. Every number traces to a cited public source with its retrieval date; corrections are published, not erased. Rebuilt 2026-07-19 from the repo's research files.