Municipality in Southwest Ontario, with no county above it

Chatham-Kent property tax rate, 2025

1.75% of the assessed value on your MPAC notice, each year

$8,759 a year on a $500,000 home, or about $730 a month

Higher than 81% of the 283 Ontario municipalities that have filed 2025

Each dot is one municipality, placed by its 2025 rate. Further right is higher. The rest file 2025 later in the year.

Chatham-Kent 1.75%
Middle 1.39%4 more, up to 4.40%
Chatham-Kent
Middle 1.39%4 more, to 4.40%
  • Lowest fifth
  • Low
  • Middle fifth
  • High
  • Highest fifth
  • Chatham-Kent

Chatham-Kent in short

  • $8,759 a year on a $500,000 home: $7,994 to Chatham-Kent council and $765 to schools.
  • Up 0.33 points since 2019, or $1,651 a year more on a $500,000 home.
  • Rent $870 a month, home value $348,000 in the 2021 Census, against an Ontario middle of $980 and $400,000.

2025 is the newest year Chatham-Kent has filed, so this page uses it. 283 of Ontario’s 386 municipalities have filed 2025 so far, and Chatham-Kent is compared with them. In 2024, when all of them had filed, Chatham-Kent was higher than 79% at 1.68%.

Who sets the rate

Two bodies set Chatham-Kent's rate: Chatham-Kent council and the Province of Ontario, for schools. Chatham-Kent has no county above it, so there is no county or region portion: its own rate of 1.60% already pays for services that a county would run elsewhere. That is also why comparing Chatham-Kent's municipal rate directly against a township's understates what the township actually pays.

PortionRateOn $500,000Share
MunicipalChatham-Kent council1.60%$7,99491%
County or regionNone in Chatham-Kent0.00%$00%
EducationProvince of Ontario0.15%$7659%
Total1.75%$8,759100%

Each rate is rounded to two decimals, so the parts can add up to 0.01 off the total.

How the rate has changed, 2019–2025

Up every year since 2020. Since 2019 the total rate here has risen by 0.33 percentage points, from 1.42% to 1.75%. On a $500,000 home that is $1,651 a year more than in 2019.

  1. 20191.42%$7,108
  2. 20201.42%$7,107
  3. 20211.47%$7,331
  4. 20221.50%$7,502
  5. 20231.58%$7,912
  6. 20241.68%$8,385
  7. 2025*1.75%$8,759
Total residential rate, with the tax on a $500,000 home underneath. *2025 is Chatham-Kent's own filing; 104 municipalities have not filed 2025 yet.
Each part of the rate, year by year

Over the same years the residential assessment base moved from $0M to $7,409M, and the residential levy collected went from $93M to $130M. A rate rising while the base also grows means the budget grew faster than property values; a rate falling while the base grows usually means the opposite. Assessment is the figure on the MPAC notice, still based on 2016 values province-wide.

YearMunicipalCounty or regionEducationTotalChangeOn $500,000
20191.26%—0.16%1.42%—$7,108
20201.27%—0.15%1.42%−0.00 pts$7,107
20211.31%—0.15%1.47%+0.04 pts$7,331
20221.35%—0.15%1.50%+0.03 pts$7,502
20231.43%—0.15%1.58%+0.08 pts$7,912
20241.52%—0.15%1.68%+0.09 pts$8,385
2025*1.60%—0.15%1.75%+0.07 pts$8,759

Why are Chatham-Kent property taxes so high?

Chatham-Kent's total rate of 1.75% is 0.36 percentage points above the provincial middle (1.39%). A rate that high usually means the assessment base is small relative to what the budget must cover: $7.41B of taxable residential value funds $129.8M in levy here.

Home values
Homes here are assessed at $146,655 per household, 20% less than the middle ($182,514). Lower values mean it needs a higher rate to raise the same money.
Spending
It spends $8,822 per household, 22% more than the middle ($7,212). It spends more on social and family services (+$2,008), police (+$428) and social housing (+$135), and less on running the municipality (−$223) and water and wastewater (−$209).
  • Social and family services+$2,008
  • Police+$428
  • Social housing+$135
  • Running the municipality−$223
  • Water and wastewater−$209
More on why
Provincial money
Social services and social housing are partly paid for by provincial transfers, so they do not map one-to-one onto the tax bill.
Across Ontario
Across the 154 places with no county above them, the tax rate follows home values much more closely than spending: where homes are worth more, rates tend to be lower (rank correlation −0.82 for home values, 0.57 for spending). A pattern, not proof of cause.

What it costs to live in Chatham-Kent

CostChatham-KentOntario middle
Rent, per monthmedian, 2021$870Lower than 70% of 329$980
Home valueowners’ estimate, 2021$348,000Lower than 62% of 384$400,000
Property tax on a $500,000 assessment2025$8,759Higher than 81% of 283$6,964
Households spending 30% or more on housingshare of income, 202115.7%Higher than 55% of 37314.9%
Household incomemedian, before tax, 2020$72,000Lower than 76% of 377$84,000

Ontario has no official cost-of-living index for single towns. Statistics Canada’s consumer price index covers only Toronto, Ottawa and Thunder Bay here, and it measures change over time, not the gap between places. These are the costs published for each municipality: what renters paid and owners estimated in the 2021 Census, not today’s asking rents or sale prices.

Places like Chatham-Kent

The 5 places closest to Chatham-Kent on total tax rate, assessment / household, spending per household, population, 5-year growth, people per household, among places with no county above them.

Place2025 rateOn $500,000
Thunder Bay2024, not yet filed 20251.60%$8,008
Sault Ste Marie1.74%$8,687
Chatham-Kent this page1.75%$8,759
Cornwall2024, not yet filed 20251.84%$9,212
Espanola1.90%$9,516
Timmins2024, not yet filed 20251.99%$9,942
Closest rates in Southwest Ontario

The nearest rates in Southwest Ontario that have filed 2025. Rates compare most cleanly between places whose assessments sit at similar levels.

MunicipalityRateOn $500,000vs Chatham-Kent
Goderich1.75%$8,773+$14
Oil Springs1.76%$8,807+$48
St Thomas1.72%$8,610−$149
Petrolia1.70%$8,494−$265
Woodstock1.82%$9,104+$345
Aylmer1.82%$9,123+$364

All 283 Ontario municipalities in one table

More on Chatham-Kent

All 14 property classes, 2025

Residential is one of 14 classes Chatham-Kent reported this year. The tax ratio is the multiple applied to the residential rate: a ratio of 1.7 on multi-residential means an apartment building pays 1.7× what a house pays on the same assessed value.

ClassTax ratioMunicipalCounty or regionEducationTotal
Landfill9.391215.02%—0.88%15.90%
Shopping Centre2.23973.58%—0.88%4.46%
Industrial2.0353.25%—0.88%4.13%
Large Industrial2.0353.25%—0.88%4.13%
Commercial1.94043.10%—0.88%3.98%
Office Building1.56382.50%—0.88%3.38%
Multi-Residential1.94043.10%—0.15%3.26%
Aggregate Extraction Property1.6558932.65%—0.51%3.16%
Parking Lot1.29852.08%—0.88%2.96%
Pipeline1.27422.04%—0.88%2.92%
New Multi-Residential1.11.76%—0.15%1.91%
Residential11.60%—0.15%1.75%
Managed Forest0.250.40%—0.04%0.44%
Farmland0.220.35%—0.04%0.39%

Sources and method

Tax rates and spending come from the Financial Information Return that Chatham-Kent files with the Province of Ontario; population, rents and home values from Statistics Canada.

Every source, the method and the limits
Tax rates
Ontario Financial Information Return (FIR), 22 GPL — Municipal and School Board Taxation. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Municipal Act s.294(1). Years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025; retrieved 2026-10-11. Download the file
Spending, households
Financial Information Return Schedule 40 (consolidated expenses by function) and Schedule 02 (households and population).
Population
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 17-10-0155-01, Population estimates, July 1, by census subdivision. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Rent, home value, income
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Statistics Canada Open Licence. Rent is the median monthly shelter cost of renter households (rent plus any utilities they pay). The Ontario middle is the median across the municipalities with a published figure.
Method
Dollar figures are the rate times $500,000 of assessed value. Standing compares Chatham-Kent's 2025 total residential rate with all 283 Ontario municipalities: 53 of the other 282 charge more. The five colours split them into fifths.
Municipality ID
MunID 36003, MAH 53102
Limits
These are the figures Chatham-Kent filed with the province. An individual bill can include area-specific charges and local improvement levies that a municipality-wide rate does not capture. Reference, not tax advice.