Price of the Soil: Property Values of Leaseholds and Certificates of Possession

Steven Rogers; Ceilidh Ballantyne; Erin Tompkins; Brian Ballantyne

doi:10.54056/KOSW7658

Authors

Steven Rogers
Ceilidh Ballantyne
Erin Tompkins
Brian Ballantyne

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54056/KOSW7658

Keywords:

Business And Economics, Certificates, Civilization, Community, Discounts, Ethnic Interests, Housing, Indigenous peoples, Land tenure, Native North Americans, Property rights, Property values, Registration, Reserves, Sales, Trends, Indigenous economic leadership, Indigenous economic development

Abstract

This paper presents the empirical analysis of property values across a sample of 228 leaseholds and 79 Certificates of Possession (CP) on 34 First Nation Reserves. The property values were benchmarked against a sample of 338 fee simple property sales in 34 comparable non-Indigenous communities. The results were that leaseholds were discounted 17-75% (with a mean of 24%) and CPs were discounted 65-98% (with a mean of 88%). Data across 14 factors was used to analyze trends in property values. Three trends were noteworthy: (1) Leasehold values were higher in communities where the community housing score (estimate of the quality of housing) was higher; (2) CP values were higher in communities where the ratio of informality was lower (estimate of the proportion of properties held by formalized rights under the Indian Act); and (3) Property values were higher when Chief and Council remuneration was higher. The steep discounts observed here must spur research into the viability of existing land tenure/registration systems on First Nation Reserves and into the merits of new institutions to serve First Nations.

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