Fort St. John, British Columbia
Fort St. John publishes something no other city in this batch does: the assessed value of its single largest property, $19,350,400 against a $4.04 billion roll — 0.5%. In the oil and gas capital of British Columbia the biggest rateable thing in town is a shopping centre owned by Canadian Tire's REIT, and the twenty largest owners of record are named, with what each paid, in the City's own annual report.
8 buildings · 7 with an owner established · 14 sources · 5 tier A · 3 tier B · prepared 2026-10-03
Can you find out who owns it?
British Columbia's land title register is open to anyone but priced per search: $11.06 for a search under section 377 of the Land Title Act on the LTSA Customer Fee Listing current at 1 April 2026, with no bulk owner product and no price-paid file. LTSA's tax certificate table prices the other route to an owner — a municipal tax certificate — at $100.26 for the City of Fort St. John. The free part of the system is the Land Owner Transparency Registry, which since 30 November 2020 has required a transparency declaration on every new registration and a transparency report from corporations, trusts and partnerships naming the individuals behind them; a search of the publicly accessible part is priced NIL. What makes this city legible is the City's own 2025 Annual Report, which prints a 2025 Major Taxpayers table under the column heading "Registered Owner" with the property type and the tax levied against each of twenty companies. One more distinction matters here more than anywhere else in the province: the petroleum and natural gas tenures that drive the local economy are subsurface rights granted by the Crown, not ownership of the surface, and the land title register does not record them.
Is ownership public?Public, but one paid search at a time
Cost of one title search$11.06 per title search (LTSA Customer Fee Listing, fees as at April 1, 2026). A search of publicly accessible information under section 35 of the Land Owner Transparency Act is priced NIL on the same schedule. A municipal tax certificate for Fort St. John is $100.26.
Bulk ownership dataNone published
Sale pricesAggregates only — no individual sales
Sites that forbid taking their data
- bcassessment.ca — “Any commercial use of these data in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, including the use of such data for business, residential address or telephone directory services or any solicitation service is specifically prohibited except with the prior written authority of the owner of the copyright.”
1
The marquee buildings
The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.
| Building | Use | Owner | Owner type | Last price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Totem Mall 9600 93 Avenue, Fort St. John |
Retail | CT REIT Totem Mall Ltd The City of Fort St. John's 2025 Annual Report names, under the column heading "Registered Owner", CT REIT Totem Mall Ltd against a Retail property with $818,792.36 of taxes levied — the largest single tax account in the city. The company name is the building's name, so this is one of the rare cases where a municipal table identifies both the owner and the property. CT REIT is the Canadian Tire-sponsored real estate investment trust; its own portfolio page is 403 to scripts and 404 to WebFetch, so no floor area is published here. Canadian Tire Real Estate Ltd appears separately in the same table at $500,054.13 against a Commercial Development property. |
REIT | —A |
| Peace Valley OSB mill Fort St. John area 800 million sq ft of annual capacity, 3/8-inch basis |
Industrial | Louisiana-Pacific Corporation Louisiana-Pacific's 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 lists "Peace Valley, British Columbia, Canada" among its seven OSB production facilities at 800 million square feet of annual capacity on a 3/8-inch basis, the second largest of the seven. The City's own Major Taxpayers table separately names Louisiana-Pacific OSB Limited Partnership against a Manufacturing property at $749,934.34, the second largest tax account in the city. The 10-K's place name is Peace Valley rather than Fort St. John, so the identification rests on the City's table naming the same corporate group as a local Manufacturing ratepayer. |
Public company | —B |
| North Peace Cultural Centre 10015 100 Avenue, Fort St. John |
Institutional | City of Fort St. John The City's 2025 Permissive Property Tax Exemptions table lists "North Peace Cultural Society (Management Agreement with City of Fort St. John)" at $112,007.56 of municipal tax relief, the largest exemption the City grants, and the Fort St. John Curling Club on the same footing at $45,681.02. The City's own wording resolves the commonest trap in this section in the City's favour: the society manages under agreement with the City, which is the City's description of a building it holds and someone else runs. The exemption table does not state title in terms, so this is a reading of the City's own words. |
Government | —B |
| Pomeroy Sport Centre 9324 96 Street, Fort St. John |
Civic | City of Fort St. John The City's audited 2025 deferred revenue note carries a line headed "Pomeroy Sports Centre — School District #60 lease": $715,353 at 31 December 2024, $46,654 of revenue earned in the year and $668,699 deferred at 31 December 2025. Deferred lease revenue runs to the landlord, so the City is receiving prepaid rent from the school district rather than paying it — the arena complex is on the City's side of the lease. The note does not state title and no price is published. |
Government | —B |
| Fort St. John Post Office 10139 100th Avenue, Fort St. John 1,423.6 sq m on 0.2085 ha |
Retail | Canada Post Corporation The Directory of Federal Real Property records the Fort St. John Post Office at 10139 100th Avenue as "Crown Owned" by Canada Post Corporation: one building, 1,423.60 sq m of floor area on 0.2085 ha. It is the only building in the city that any federal custodian owns. Published under the Open Government Licence – Canada. |
Government | —A |
| Fort St. John RCMP Detachment 10712 100 Street, Fort St. John 4,769 sq m |
Civic | Not established a paid title search would answer it The Directory of Federal Real Property records the Fort St. John Detachment Site at 10712 100 Street, 4,769 sq m of floor area in one building, held by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police under "Lease or Licence" and explicitly not Crown Owned — the largest federal occupancy in the city and one Canada does not own. The register records no land area against it, which is what it does for a leasehold interest in a building. The landlord is behind the title register and the City's Major Taxpayers table does not identify it. |
Not established | —A |
| City-owned lot at 100 Avenue and 100 Street 100 Avenue at 100 Street, Fort St. John |
Land | City of Fort St. John The City's 2025 Annual Report records among the year's accomplishments that it "introduced a Revitalization Tax Exemption Bylaw to encourage and support development on the empty City-owned lot at 100 Avenue and 100 Street" — the City naming its own ownership of the vacant corner at the centre of its downtown grid. The same report notes the City owns a gravel pit whose operating permit carries a reclamation clause requiring the land to be reclaimed, and that it owns several buildings known to contain asbestos. No price or area is stated for any of them. |
Government | —A |
| Fort St. John gravel pit Fort St. John |
Industrial | City of Fort St. John The City's audited 2025 financial statements state in the asset retirement obligation note that "the City owns a gravel pit" and that "the operating permit contains a reclamation clause, stating the land must be reclaimed". A municipality disclosing a reclamation liability is disclosing ownership. Neither the area nor the location is given in the statements, and no price is published. |
Government | —A |
2
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
Fort St. John's annual report carries a financial-risk section built from provincial indicators, and two of its figures are the best things in this record: the assessed value of the largest single property in the city, and the value of its commercial assessment. Together they say that a resource town with a $4bn roll has no dominant ratepayer at all — the risk indicator reads 0.5% and is scored Low. The subsurface wealth is not in these numbers, because petroleum and natural gas tenure is a Crown right over what lies beneath and is not recorded on the land title register or the assessment roll as land.
Assessed value of the largest single property$19,350,400
The City's 2025 Annual Report, "Reliance on a Single Account" indicator: assessed value of largest property $19,350,400 against total assessed value of $4,042,702,579 — 0.5%, scored Low risk. The same page gives the value of commercial assessment as $1,230,594,600 (30.4% of the roll, scored Low risk), total taxes billed in the year $59,417,970 with $5,485,396 billed but not paid, transfers from other governments $39,372,312 of $110,329,268 of total revenue, and a three-year tax base increase of $303,992,244 from $3,738,710,335 in 2023.
City total assessed value, 2026 roll$4.15B
$4,146,826,314 for general municipal purposes on the 2026 roll: residential $2,819,729,375, business and other $1,257,307,850, light industry $26,777,000, major industry $20,015,000, recreation and non-profit $16,843,100, utilities $5,882,255, farm $271,732. BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Local Government Statistics Schedule 701 for the year 2026. Major industry is less than half a percent of the roll in the province's gas capital.
Twenty largest taxpayers, 2025 municipal taxes$8,452,046
The City's 2025 Major Taxpayers table, by registered owner: CT REIT Totem Mall Ltd $818,792.36; Louisiana-Pacific OSB Limited Partnership $749,934.34; 523364 BC Ltd Inc $728,030.58; MT Investments Inc $701,894.38; NPR GP Inc $544,473.31; Fort St John Old Fort Holdings $500,054.13; Canadian Tire Real Estate Ltd $500,054.13; Side Asset Management Ltd $412,418.49; Surerus Construction & Development Ltd $392,867.02; Wal-Mart Canada Corp $390,513.88; Ric Peterson Development Inc $300,125.25; Willy 3 Holdings Ltd $296,879.71; 243045 Alberta Ltd $290,887.06; Jordan Enterprises Ltd $287,517.38; Macro Industries Inc $269,886.58; Fort St John Co-Operative Assoc $268,572.83; Crombie Property Holdings Ltd $265,617.21; 959630 Alberta Inc $249,278.53; Westcoast Energy Inc $247,313.11; Heidelberg Materials $236,935.99.
City's own land, at cost$21,259,468
The land column of the City's audited consolidated schedule of tangible capital assets at 31 December 2025, unchanged from 2024, within $574,895,723 of total net book value — of which buildings are $127,126,489 and general infrastructure $264,153,147. The City reports no developer-contributed general, water or sewer infrastructure at all in 2025 or 2024, which in a growing city is unusual and is stated as $0.00 in the note.
Whole-city turnover, 2025618 sales, $274.6M
618 market transactions in the City of Fort St. John across 2025 — 564 residential, 53 commercial — with $274,613,173 of total fair market value and $3,162,810 of property transfer tax paid. 82 were corporate transactions and 359 individual; the corporate count was suppressed as not releasable in 4 of 12 months. BC Ministry of Finance property transfer tax data 2025, municipal monthly file.
City area and population3,304 ha, 21,465 people
Schedule 201, General Statistics for 2024: 3,265 ha of land and 39 ha of water, 3,304 ha total; 2021 census population 21,465, BC Stats estimate 23,005; 442 km of roads and 263 km of water pipe. The province's legally defined municipal boundary layer independently returns 3,303.5 ha.
3
Who owns the town
At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.
Fort St. John is the most privately held municipality in this batch. A 100-metre grid sample of the province's land-designation layer inside the legal city boundary resolves 2,351 of 3,323 hectares — 70.7% — to Private Parcel, and 421 ha (12.7%) to municipal parcels and local park. Crown tenure inside the boundary is almost nothing: the province's Crown tenures layer returns six hectares of fish and wildlife management reserve and no lease, licence or right-of-way of any size. The layer's residual class, "Forest Management Unit", comes back for 540 ha (16.3%) inside a built-up city and is NOT read here as Crown forest, following the finding that the same class returns for roads, parks and hospital land elsewhere in the province. The gas is a different question: petroleum and natural gas rights in the Peace are Crown tenures over the subsurface, held under the Energy Resource Activities Act and administered by the BC Energy Regulator, and they are not an interest in the surface and not on the land title register.
| Name | Type | Holdings |
|---|---|---|
| Privately held land (owner not published) Derived from our own 100 m grid sample of the province's Land Designations for Forest Management layer clipped to the legally defined City of Fort St. John boundary (3,323 sample points, 3,323.0 ha against the boundary layer's 3,303.5 ha): 2,198 ha classed Private Parcel outright, plus 77 ha, 69 ha, 5 ha and 2 ha in overlapping Private Parcel classes. The layer is licensed "Access Only", so only this derived aggregate is published, never the data, and the layer records the designation and never the owner's name. |
Private company | 2,351 ha of 3,323 ha, 70.7%A |
| City of Fort St. John The same grid sample returns 355 ha classed Municipal Parcels, 64 ha Local/Regional Park with Municipal Parcels and two further hectares — 12.7% of the city. The City's audited schedule carries land at $21,259,468 of historical cost within $574,895,723 of tangible capital assets at net book value. The City separately states it owns a gravel pit with a reclamation obligation, several asbestos-containing buildings, and the empty lot at 100 Avenue and 100 Street. |
Government | 421 ha of municipal parcels and park; $21,259,468 of land at costA |
| Province of British Columbia (provincial Crown) The province's Crown tenures layer (TA_CROWN_TENURES_SVW), clipped to the city boundary and limited to tenures in good standing, returns one designation of any size: 6 ha of Environment, Conservation and Recreation reserve/notation for fish and wildlife management. There is no Crown lease, licence or right-of-way of measurable area inside the city. This is the honest inverse of the regional picture: the Crown owns most of the Peace, and almost none of Fort St. John. |
Government | 6 ha of tenure inside the boundaryA |
| Canada (federal custodians) The Directory of Federal Real Property records exactly one Crown Owned federal property inside the city — Canada Post's post office at 10139 100th Avenue, 1,423.60 sq m on 0.2085 ha — against leased accommodation at the RCMP detachment (4,769 sq m) and the Business Development Bank at 201-10019 103rd Avenue (130 sq m). The grid sample returns 7 ha of First Nation Reserve under federal administration inside the boundary. |
Government | 0.2085 ha owned; 4,899 sq m leasedA |
| BC Hydro and Power Authority The largest landholding in the region belongs to the provincial power authority and lies outside this city. The Site C project's own website records that the dam has been officially named The John Horgan Dam and Generating Station and names BC Hydro throughout, with a Fort St. John project office. Nothing on the page opened states the reservoir area, the expropriated acreage or the project cost, and none of those is inside the City of Fort St. John, so no figure is attributed to this record. |
Government | the Site C project lands, outside the city boundaryB |
5
Who builds the houses
New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.
No league table of homebuilders exists for a city of 21,465, and the City publishes no starts count in its annual report. What it does publish is the registered owner behind each of its twenty largest tax accounts, and three of them are development and construction companies and two are residential rental holdings — which is the local building industry as the tax roll sees it. Nothing here is a unit count, and none is invented.
| Name | Type | 2025 municipal taxes |
|---|---|---|
| Surerus Construction & Development Ltd Named in the City's 2025 Major Taxpayers table as registered owner of a Commercial Development property at $392,867.02 of taxes levied, the ninth largest account in the city. The table gives the registered owner, the property type and the levy; it does not give an address, a project or a unit count, and this record adds none. |
Family / private | $392,867.02A |
| Ric Peterson Development Inc Named in the City's 2025 Major Taxpayers table as registered owner of a Rental - Commercial property at $300,125.25. The City's table is the only public source opened here that names it. |
Private company | $300,125.25A |
| NPR GP Inc The fifth largest tax account in the city, named in the City's Major Taxpayers table as registered owner of a Rental - Residential property — the largest apartment holding in Fort St. John by tax paid. 959630 Alberta Inc appears in the same table against another Rental - Residential property at $249,278.53. The City names the general partner; it does not name the fund, the buildings or the unit counts, and neither does this record. |
REIT | $544,473.31A |
| 523364 BC Ltd Inc The third largest tax account in Fort St. John, against a Commercial Development property. A numbered company is precisely what the Land Owner Transparency Registry was created for — a corporation acquiring BC land since 30 November 2020 must file a transparency report naming its interest holders, and a search of the publicly accessible part is free. No such search was run here and no individual is named. |
Private company | $728,030.58A |
| Fort St John Old Fort Holdings Named in the City's 2025 Major Taxpayers table as registered owner of a Commercial Development property at $500,054.13, tied with Canadian Tire Real Estate Ltd as the sixth largest account. The table states nothing else about it. |
Private company | $500,054.13A |
| Side Asset Management Ltd Named in the City's 2025 Major Taxpayers table as registered owner of a Commercial Development property at $412,418.49. Willy 3 Holdings Ltd appears in the same table against another Commercial Development property at $296,879.71. |
Private company | $412,418.49A |
6
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
The commercial roll is $1,230,594,600, 30.4% of the city's assessment, and the twenty owners of record the City names paid $8,452,046 between them in 2025. Two of the twenty are national retail landlords, two are national resource and materials companies, two are hotel-holding companies and six are numbered companies. The pattern is a service town for an oil and gas basin rather than a town that owns the basin.
| Name | Type | 2025 municipal taxes |
|---|---|---|
| CT REIT Totem Mall Ltd The largest tax account in the city, named by the City as registered owner of a Retail property. The company's name identifies the building: Totem Mall, Fort St. John's regional shopping centre. Canadian Tire Real Estate Ltd appears separately at $500,054.13 against Commercial Development property, so the Canadian Tire group holds two of the city's seven largest accounts. |
REIT | $818,792.36A |
| MT Investments Inc Fourth largest tax account in Fort St. John, named as registered owner of a Rental - Commercial property — the largest privately held commercial landlord in the city by tax paid. The City names the owner and the property type only. |
Private company | $701,894.38A |
| Crombie Property Holdings Ltd Named in the City's Major Taxpayers table as registered owner of a Commercial Development property. Crombie is the grocery-anchored real estate investment trust associated with Empire Company; the City's table names the holding company and nothing more, and no filing was opened to confirm which asset this is. |
REIT | $265,617.21A |
| Wal-Mart Canada Corp Named by the City as registered owner of a Retail property at $390,513.88 — one of the few national retailers in the city that owns its own store rather than renting it, on the evidence of the roll. Costco does not appear in the table. |
Public company | $390,513.88A |
| Westcoast Energy Inc Named by the City as registered owner of an Industrial property at $247,313.11. Westcoast Energy is the pipeline company that carries northeast British Columbia gas to market; it is the nineteenth largest ratepayer in the city it is named after in every pipeline map of the province, which is a measure of how little of a gas system is taxable inside a municipal boundary. |
Public company | $247,313.11A |
| Heidelberg Materials Named by the City as registered owner of an Industrial property at $236,935.99, the twentieth largest account. Macro Industries Inc ($269,886.58) and Fort St John Co-Operative Assoc ($268,572.83) are the other two industrial accounts in the table. |
Public company | $236,935.99A |
| 243045 Alberta Ltd and Jordan Enterprises Ltd The City names both as registered owners of Hotel properties, at $290,887.06 and $287,517.38 — two of the twenty largest tax accounts in the city are hotels, which is what a camp-and-crew economy does to a small-town commercial roll. 243045 Alberta Ltd and 959630 Alberta Inc are Alberta corporations holding Fort St. John property. |
Private company | $578,404.44 combinedA |
?
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- Totem Mall's floor area and CT REIT's own portfolio entry for it. ctreit.com returns 403 to curl on both the home page and the properties page, and the property-search page 404s to WebFetch. The owner is established from the City's own Major Taxpayers table, which names CT REIT Totem Mall Ltd; the size is not established.
- Which property each of the twenty named accounts is against. The City publishes the registered owner, the property type and the levy, and no address.
- Who stands behind 523364 BC Ltd Inc, Willy 3 Holdings Ltd, 243045 Alberta Ltd, 959630 Alberta Inc and Fort St John Old Fort Holdings. A free Land Owner Transparency Registry search would name the interest holders behind any of them that is a reporting body; it requires an LTSA account, which was not opened here, and no individual is named in this record.
- Whether the City holds fee simple title to the North Peace Cultural Centre and the Pomeroy Sport Centre. The City's own documents describe a management agreement with the City for the one and a school district lease receivable by the City for the other, which is strong but is not a statement of title.
- The Fort St. John Hospital and Peace Villa. Northern Health's own location page returns 404, so nothing is claimed about the largest institutional building in the city.
- The landlord behind the leased RCMP detachment at 10712 100 Street, the largest federal occupancy in the city.
- Any Crown-versus-private share for the Peace River region outside the city boundary, and the acreage BC Hydro holds for Site C. Neither was established from a page opened here.
- No open dataset names the owner of a BC parcel, and BC publishes no price-paid file: property transfer tax data is monthly counts and aggregate fair market value by municipality, with Fort St. John's corporate-transaction count suppressed in 4 of 12 months of 2025.
§
Sources
- Fees — LTSA Customer Fee Listing as at April 1, 2026, including the Tax Certificates table — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
- About the Land Owner Transparency Registry — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
- BC Assessment homepage, terms of use and copyright notice — BC Assessment · openA
- Local Government Statistics — Schedule 701, Assessed Values for the year 2026 — BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs · openA
- Local Government Statistics — Schedule 201, General Statistics for 2024 — BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs · openA
- Property Transfer Tax Data 2025 — municipal monthly file — BC Ministry of Finance / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- 2025 Annual Report — City of Fort St. John (audited financial statements, 2025 Major Taxpayers, 2025 Permissive Property Tax Exemptions, financial risk indicators) — City of Fort St. John · openA
- Directory of Federal Real Property — full XML extract, properties in Fort St. John, British Columbia — Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- Louisiana-Pacific Corporation Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 — OSB production facilities table — US Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR) · openA
- Land Designations for Forest Management (ANA_LDFM_LND_DESIG_FOR_MGMT_SP), WFS, clipped to the City of Fort St. John boundary — BC Ministry of Forests / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Crown Tenures — TANTALIS (TA_CROWN_TENURES_SVW), WFS, clipped to the City of Fort St. John boundary — BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Site C Clean Energy Project — project website — BC Hydro · openB
- Municipalities — Legally Defined Administrative Areas of BC (ABMS_MUNICIPALITIES_SP), WFS, City of Fort St John — GeoBC / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Data & Reports — Data Centre, GIS Open Data Portal and the Consult with Landowners & Rights Holders framework — BC Energy Regulator · openA