Fair Market Value, York Region, Ontario

Parking Perspectives provided the technical lead for a local team undertaking an assessment of the fair market value of over 60 parking sites operated by York Region, Ontario. The work was to provide a consistent and repeatable method, using local and available data, to provide a reasoned and defensible financial value of the parking spot provided to staff for benefit-in-kind tax purposes.

The first phase of the project considered several approaches to understanding what value was realisable from a workplace parking lot and creating an approach that worked as well and consistently for sites in a downtown area with multiple local commercial parking lots in its vicinity as it did for rural locations where there was no apparent parking market. In particular the approach involved modelling potential demands on the parking in the vicinity of each site and thus the unrealized of potential value of parking.

Of particular note was the reversal of the problem to provide a solution that would work across a spectrum of sites, from those in the city centre with an established parking market and those in rural areas with clear market but no other parking option. This innovative change addressed a number of anomalies and exceptions otherwise necessary to generate appropriate results, and provided a single model that could be consistently applied to all locations.

The project included development of market value model applicable to each site. This took account of the parking demand being generated from other sites in the area based on building type and floor area, the available parking capacity provided by that site, the overspill generated (if any), the demand for parking on the site itself and any other available parking capacity not otherwise dedicated or outside the scope of use by employees in the walking neighbourhood of the site under assessment. The model generated an evidence-based quantified reflection of the potential worth and value of the parking to employees.

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