Nelson, British Columbia

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.

The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.

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.

Nelson is the least concentrated of the three Kootenay cities in this batch: private owners hold 3,447 parcels and 65% of the titled land area, and no single private holding is documented anywhere in public. The City is the one owner whose holdings are itemised, and they are unusual in kind rather than in area — a 45-hectare municipal estate plus an entire electric utility, a generating station 16 km outside the boundary, and a service territory extending well beyond the city into the Regional District of Central Kootenay. Crown agencies hold a fifth of the titled area; the Province itself holds barely 3%. Around the city the forest is Crown land under licence: the province's register shows 110 active harvest authorities over 7,045 ha within about 25 km, and not one of them is ownership of land.

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.

CMHC and Statistics Canada do not publish a housing-starts series for Nelson, so the City's own monthly building-permit reports are the count of record — and they are unusually good for a town this size: a permit list and a statistics sheet every month with year-to-date totals. 2025: 143 building permits, $24,941,264 of construction value, 34 new single dwelling units of which 26 secondary suites, 50 new multi-unit residential units, 13 dwelling units lost — 78 new dwelling units in all, plus 110 plumbing permits. That was down sharply from 2024's 183 permits and $39,717,244. Who builds them is answerable only from a licence register, not from output: British Columbia publishes no homes-per-builder table and BC Housing's registry gives no unit counts. A By-City search for Nelson returns 52 licences in good standing, of which 40 are held by companies or under trade names and 12 by named individuals, who are not listed here.

The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.

There is no commercial landlord list for Nelson and no source that would support one: no REIT reports a Nelson asset, the City publishes no commercial-property inventory, and BC Assessment's values may not be reused commercially. What is documented is the shape of the commercial ground rather than who owns it. Business and other assessment is $437.4M on the 2026 roll — 12.5% of the base but a quarter of the tax levy, because the Business/Other rate is $7.2904 per $1,000 against $3.2370 residential. The core is the heritage Baker Street strip, which the City maintains directly (the Parks department "maintains the landscaping and greenery along Baker Street, Vernon Street, Hall Street, the City Pier and the Lakeside Drive trail"), where Council supported the 85 Baker Street workforce-housing project with $100,000 of pre-development funding, a Local Service Area and variances, and where Baker Street reconstruction was being prepared in 2025. The City also carries a Downtown & waterfront reserve of $529,657 and $443,958 outstanding on a Baker Street bridge debenture.

Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.

1. Fees — LTSA Customer Fee Listing (fees as at April 1, 2026), including the Land Owner Transparency Act schedule and the Tax Certificates Online participating-municipality table — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
2. About the Land Owner Transparency Registry — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
3. BC Assessment homepage, terms of use and copyright notice — BC Assessment · openA
4. Local Government Statistics — Schedule 701, Assessed Values for the year 2026 — BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs · openA
5. Property Transfer Tax Data 2025 — municipal monthly file — BC Ministry of Finance · openA
6. ParcelMap BC Parcel Fabric (PMBC_PARCEL_FABRIC_POLY_SVW) — active titled parcels by OWNER_TYPE, extracted September 2026 by paging a BBOX query over the municipal bounding box and filtering on MUNICIPALITY. Derived aggregates only; no rows reproduced — Province of British Columbia (BC Data Catalogue / openmaps WFS) · openA
7. Forest Tenure Harvesting Authority Polygons (FTEN_HARVEST_AUTH_POLY_SVW) — records with LIFE_CYCLE_STATUS_CODE 'ACTIVE' within about 25 km of the municipal bounding box, Selkirk Natural Resource District, extracted September 2026 — Province of British Columbia (BC Data Catalogue / openmaps WFS) · openA
8. BC Housing Licence Registry — residential builder licences in good standing, By-City search for Nelson — BC Housing, Licensing & Consumer Services · openA
9. Municipalities — Legally Defined Administrative Areas of BC (ABMS_MUNICIPALITIES_SP): The Corporation of the City of Nelson 1,578.3 ha, City of Castlegar 2,327.5 ha, City of Grand Forks 1,071.0 ha — Province of British Columbia (openmaps WFS) · openA
10. About Us — Nelson Hydro: generation, transmission, substations, distribution and the service-territory description — City of Nelson · openA
11. City of Nelson 2025 Annual Report, including the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025, the permissive tax-exemption schedule, the assessment and tax-rate tables and "2025 By the Numbers" — The Corporation of the City of Nelson · openA
12. City Property For Sale — legal description of 710 & 712 Railway Street — City of Nelson · openA
13. Campuses — Selkirk College (Castlegar main campus at 301 Frank Beinder Way; Tenth Street and Silver King campuses, Nelson) — Selkirk College · openB
14. Hydro Generation — Nelson Hydro (16 MW Bonnington plant, 11,000 customers, four substations, one terminal, ~320 km of line, community solar array) — City of Nelson · openA
15. How Rates are Set — Nelson Hydro: BCUC jurisdiction over rural rates, the 2019 Cost of Service Analysis, the BCUC Decision and Order of 19 July 2022, the 2026/2027 increases and $5.8M of rural vegetation management since 2017 — City of Nelson · openA
16. Building Permit Statistics, 1–31 December 2025, with 2025 and 2024 year-to-date totals; and the December 2025 Building Permit List — City of Nelson · openA
17. 2026-2027 Electrical Rates — consultation record, including BCUC Order G-139-26 of 29 June 2026 approving a 15.98% rural increase for 2026 and 1.95% for 2027 — City of Nelson (Let's Talk Nelson) · openA
18. Electrical Rates effective 1 January 2026 — urban and rural residential and small-commercial schedules under Hydro Services Bylaw 3608, 2025 — City of Nelson · openA
19. Property Tax Exemptions — the Council policy governing permissive exemptions under section 224 of the Community Charter — City of Nelson · openA
20. Building Permit Reports — the monthly permit list and statistics archive — City of Nelson · openA
21. Archive Center — City of Nelson Annual Reports 2011–2025 and Statements of Financial Information 2013–2025 — City of Nelson · openA