Waterdown, Ontario
Waterdown is a community inside the City of Hamilton and has been since 1 January 2001, when the Town of Flamborough that contained it was amalgamated along with Ancaster, Dundas, Glanbrook and Stoney Creek; Canada's names authority classifies it as "a separately named area within the limits of an incorporated municipality". Hamilton governs, assesses and bills it, and Hamilton is also the one municipality in this batch that publishes what it owns: filtering the City's property inventory to the 11.73 square kilometres of the Waterdown urban boundary returns 165 City-held parcels covering 396 acres, 13 per cent of the community. The only private owner here that any document names is CT REIT, which holds the 93,000-square-foot Canadian Tire centre on Clappison Avenue.
5 buildings · 5 with an owner established · 11 sources · 5 tier A · prepared 2026-10-03
Waterdown is not a municipality and has not been since the 2001 amalgamation. Natural Resources Canada's geographical names database records it in Wentworth with the concise code UNP — an unincorporated place — and the generic code 200, "a separately named area within the limits of an incorporated municipality"; the same database records "Flamborough" with a decision date of 1 January 2001, the day the amalgamated City of Hamilton came into being. Hamilton's own Community Boundaries layer still draws the six former municipalities, Flamborough among them at 496.07 km², and Waterdown sits inside it. The City of Hamilton files the Financial Information Return, MPAC assesses the parcels and Hamilton levies the tax; no Waterdown or Flamborough figure exists in any published Ontario municipal finance. Ownership follows the provincial rule: ServiceOntario states the land registry "contains the official records of property ownership and other legal interests such as mortgages, transfers and leases", "covers more than 7.4 million parcels of land in the province", is "only available online", and that on OnLand "You can do a self-search for a fee" — $37.10 per parcel register from 2 November 2026. There is no bulk ownership extract at any price, Teraview is restricted to licensed users, MPAC's values are behind three log-in-only products and still pegged to 1 January 2016, and Ontario publishes no price-paid file. What Hamilton does publish is its own holdings, parcel by parcel with an area, and that is the one open ownership dataset in this record that is not federal.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canadian Tire Waterdown — 11 Clappison Avenue 11 Clappison Avenue, Waterdown (City of Hamilton) 71,424 sq ft Canadian Tire plus 21,746 sq ft of other CTC-banner space |
Retail | CT Real Estate Investment Trust CT REIT's 2025 Annual Information Form lists 11 Clappison Avenue, Waterdown in its table of "Properties Anchored by a Canadian Tire Store with Additional Third-Party Tenants": year built 2007, last renovated 2016, Canadian Tire GLA 71,424 sq ft, other CTC-banner GLA 21,746 sq ft, no third-party GLA, property occupancy 100 per cent, Canadian Tire lease expiring 2030. Footnotes on the row record that the property includes other CTC banners and a gas bar under a separate ground lease of roughly 30,000 to 40,000 sq ft of land. It is the only private property in Waterdown whose owner any opened document names. |
REIT | —A |
| Waterdown Memorial Park 200 Hamilton Street North, Waterdown (City of Hamilton) 17.58 acres |
Land | City of Hamilton City of Hamilton City Properties inventory, category Public Care/Use Asset, Ward 15, property area 17.58 acres. It is the largest park the City holds inside the Waterdown urban boundary and the second-largest City parcel there of any kind. North Wentworth Community Park at 27 Highway 5 West is slightly larger at 18.07 acres but is recorded in the inventory as a Public Care/Use Asset split across two parcels. The inventory gives an area and a category for every City parcel; it does not give a value, and Ontario publishes none. |
Government | —A |
| Flamborough Municipal Service Centre and Waterdown Memorial Hall 163 and 317 Dundas Street East, Waterdown (City of Hamilton) 2.15 acres and 0.21 acres |
Civic | City of Hamilton City of Hamilton City Properties inventory: the Flamborough Municipal Service Centre at 163 Dundas St E, 2.15 acres, category Public Care/Use Asset; and Waterdown Memorial Hall at 317 Dundas St E, carried across three parcels totalling 0.21 acres under the category Tourism and Cultural Asset — the only Tourism and Cultural asset the City holds in Waterdown. The service centre is the municipal counter that replaced the Town of Flamborough's own offices after the 2001 amalgamation, and its name is the clearest surviving trace of the former municipality. |
Government | —A |
| 20 Parkside Drive and 586 Highway 6 North — future police land 20 Parkside Drive and 586 Highway 6 North, Waterdown (City of Hamilton) 9.13 acres and 3.03 acres |
Land | City of Hamilton Two parcels the City's own inventory labels "20 PARKSIDE DRIVE - FUTURE POLICE" and "586 HIGHWAY 6 - FUTURE POLICE", both category Protective/Strategic Asset, Ward 15, 9.13 and 3.03 acres. They are a municipal land bank held against a station that does not exist yet, and they are the kind of holding that is normally invisible: no Ontario register would show the intended use, and only because Hamilton publishes its own asset names is it legible at all. Hamilton Fire Station #24 at 256 Parkside Drive, 1.14 acres, is the one protective building already standing. |
Government | —A |
| Waterdown Post Office 17 Main Street North, Waterdown, ON L0R 2H0 (City of Hamilton) 207 m² on 0.2 ha |
Retail | Canada Post Corporation Directory of Federal Real Property, Canada Post, interest type Crown Owned, one building, 207 m² of floor space on 0.2 ha. It is the only federal property of any kind inside Waterdown. Hamilton as a whole holds 39 federal properties, 37.27 ha and 141,886 m² of floor space, concentrated on the harbour and in the lower city; none of the rest of it is in Flamborough except the leased post office at Carlisle. |
Government | —A |
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
Two things have to be said before any figure here. First, no assessment or levy number in this section is Waterdown's: the City of Hamilton files one Financial Information Return for 1,118 square kilometres and six former municipalities and publishes no breakdown. Second, the year is 2022 and not 2025, because the City of Hamilton is absent from Ontario's bulk Financial Information Return files for 2023, 2024 and 2025 — the 2025 file contains "Hamilton Tp", which is Hamilton Township in Northumberland County and a completely different municipality, and no "Hamilton C". 2022 is the most recent year in which the City of Hamilton filed into the bulk data. What IS Waterdown-specific is the City's own property inventory, which tags every parcel with an area, a ward and a community, and which this record filtered against the part of Hamilton's published Urban Boundary that contains Waterdown.
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.
Waterdown is the one community in this batch where the municipality is a measurable landowner rather than an unmeasured one, because Hamilton publishes a parcel-level inventory with areas. Everything private remains unknowable.
| Name | Type | Holdings |
|---|---|---|
| City of Hamilton 165 parcels in the City's own City Properties layer, filtered by point-in-polygon against the Waterdown part of Hamilton's Urban Boundary. The share is high because a large part of it is Grindstone Creek, the Niagara Escarpment slope and stormwater land that cannot be built on. City-wide the same layer carries 282 parcels and 1,122 acres tagged to the community of Flamborough. |
Government | 396.05 acres (160.3 ha) — 13.7% of the Waterdown urban areaA |
| Government of Canada One post office. Proportionally the smallest federal footprint of any of the six places in this batch except Stittsville. |
Government | 0.2 haA |
| Every private holder in Waterdown There is no concentration measure for the community or for the former Town of Flamborough. Ontario has no open roll, no price-paid file and no bulk ownership extract; the parcel register is $37.10 per PIN and cannot be read in quantity at any price. |
Private company | not establishedA |
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.
Waterdown's housing has a shape that is unusual for a community of its size: the largest licensee by far is a condominium builder. NHDG (Waterdown) Inc., part of Burlington's New Horizon group, records 1,019 possessions of which 937 are condominium units and only 82 freehold — more condominium homes under one Waterdown-named licence than any other place in this batch produced in total. Behind it sit a locally registered condominium and freehold builder on First Street and four small custom builders registered in the village. The usual caveat applies and is important here: the directory gives the licensee's REGISTERED address, not where the homes were built, and a licensee named for a community is a naming convention rather than a boundary. Figures are cumulative province-wide possessions, 2016–2026.
| Name | Type | Total possessions (cumulative, Ontario) |
|---|---|---|
| NHDG (Waterdown) Inc. (New Horizon Homes) 82 freehold + 937 condominium, account B46954, umbrella New Horizon Homes, licensed 11 July 2018, registered at 3170 Harvester Road, Burlington. The largest single licensee in this entire batch of six places. newhorizonhomes.ca does not resolve, so the projects behind the number could not be enumerated from the builder's own site. |
Private company | 1,019A |
| Hawk Ridge Homes Inc. 10 freehold + 64 condominium, account B42433, licensed 15 March 2013, registered at 55 First Street, Waterdown. The largest builder actually registered in the community, and like New Horizon it builds mostly condominium. |
Private company | 74A |
| TRUcustom Homes Inc. 14 freehold, account B41384, licensed 12 August 2011, registered at 79 Elgin Street, Waterdown. |
Private company | 14A |
| Chelten Developments Inc. 7 freehold, account B41847, licensed 3 May 2012, registered at 296 Dundas Street East, Waterdown. |
Private company | 7A |
| Tannco Const. Co. Limited 6 freehold, account B12177, licensed 20 October 1988 and registered at 95 Hamilton Street North, Waterdown — the oldest builder licence in the community by twenty-three years. |
Private company | 6A |
| 5045377 Ontario Inc. and Onelife Design & Build Inc. 5045377 Ontario Inc. (B60484, 109 Braeheid Avenue, licensed 23 August 2021) has one freehold possession; Onelife Design & Build Inc. (B62798, 706 Highway 6, licensed 17 January 2024) has none recorded. Six licensees in all give Waterdown as their city. |
Private company | 1 and no possessions recordedA |
| City of Hamilton — all builders The only official completion count that reaches Waterdown, and it covers the whole city: Ontario's housing supply progress table, 2,384 homes in 2024 against a 3,917 target, 60.86 per cent, status "Not met", and 10,196 since 2022 against a ten-year target of 47,000. |
Government | 2,384 in 2024A |
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
Waterdown's commercial ownership comes down to one REIT and one municipality, and a trap worth stating because it is the kind that puts a building in the wrong record. Flamboro Downs, the racetrack and casino usually described as being near Waterdown, is not in Waterdown: Great Canadian Entertainment's own page gives its address as "967 Highway #5 West, Dundas ON L9H 5E2". It is therefore in the former Town of Dundas, not the former Town of Flamborough, and it is left out of this record entirely rather than counted as a Waterdown asset.
| Name | Type | Floor area / land |
|---|---|---|
| CT Real Estate Investment Trust CT REIT 2025 Annual Information Form: 71,424 sq ft of Canadian Tire GLA plus 21,746 sq ft of other CTC-banner space, 100 per cent occupied, lease expiring 2030, plus a gas bar on a separate ground lease. Canadian Tire Corporation took 92.1 per cent of the REIT's total GLA at 31 December 2025. |
REIT | 93,170 sq ft at 11 Clappison Avenue; 31,709,453 sq ft across 378 properties (Canada)A |
| City of Hamilton City of Hamilton City Properties open layer. The largest holdings are open space and stormwater management rather than buildings: 23.60 acres at 7 Innovation Drive, 19.10 acres on Mountain Brow Road, 18.07 acres at North Wentworth Community Park, 17.58 acres at Waterdown Memorial Park and 14.18 acres beside it on Clappison Avenue. |
Government | 165 parcels, 396.05 acres inside the Waterdown urban boundaryA |
| Government of Canada (Canada Post) Directory of Federal Real Property, the Waterdown post office at 17 Main St N, Crown Owned. Canada neither owns nor rents anything else in the community. |
Government | 207 m² on 0.2 haA |
| The Dundas Street East and Clappison's Corners retail No REIT filing, annual report or company page opened in this research names an owner for Waterdown's Dundas Street East frontage, its Parkside Drive plazas or the Clappison's Corners commercial strip beyond the Canadian Tire property. Ontario publishes no assessment roll, no price-paid file and no bulk ownership extract; the only route is the parcel register at $37.10 per PIN, and the record leaves it blank. |
Private company | not establishedA |
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- Any Waterdown-only or Flamborough-only assessment, levy, population or housing figure. Hamilton files one Financial Information Return for 1,118 km² and six former municipalities.
- A City of Hamilton assessment or levy figure later than 2022. The City is absent from Ontario's bulk Financial Information Return files for 2023, 2024 and 2025; the only "Hamilton" in the 2025 file is Hamilton Township in Northumberland County, a different municipality entirely.
- The owners of the Dundas Street East retail frontage, the Parkside Drive plazas and the Clappison's Corners commercial strip. No opened filing or company page names any of them.
- Which Waterdown projects New Horizon's 1,019 possessions represent. newhorizonhomes.ca does not resolve, so the builder's own community list could not be read.
- Registered title to the 165 City of Hamilton parcels. The City publishes an asset inventory with areas and categories, not a title register, so ownership rests on the inventory rather than on a parcel register that was opened.
- Any assessed value for any Waterdown parcel. MPAC publishes no roll, its lookup is CAPTCHA-gated and the 2026 tax year still runs on 1 January 2016 values.
- Any per-sale price with an address in Ontario. Consideration appears only on the registered transfer instrument, per parcel, at the fee in s2.
- Whether any sitting member of Hamilton City Council holds property in Waterdown relevant to a council decision. No conflict-of-interest registry was reached; nothing was established and nothing is alleged.
Sources
- Land Registry — "the official records of property ownership and other legal interests", "more than 7.4 million parcels", services "only available online", "You can do a self-search for a fee" — ServiceOntario (Government of Ontario) · openA
- Bulletin No. 2026-04, Land Services Fee Changes effective November 2, 2026 — copy of parcel register including first page $9.70 + $24.25 + $3.15 = $37.10; adjacent parcel register per PIN $13.15; additional page $2.56; inactive parcel register $1.36 — Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, Land Registry Services Branch · openA
- Directory of Federal Real Property — full XML dataset (custodian, interest type, land area, floor area, building count, parcel coordinates) — Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- The Assessment Cycle — "Property assessments for the 2026 property tax year will continue to be based on fully phased-in January 1, 2016 current values." — Municipal Property Assessment Corporation · openA
- Canadian Geographical Names Database — "Waterdown", Wentworth, concise code UNP, generic 200 ("a separately named area within the limits of an incorporated municipality"); "Flamborough", Wentworth, UNP, decision date 2001-01-01 — Natural Resources Canada · openA
- Financial Information Return, multi-year bulk data — City of Hamilton 2022, Schedule 26 taxable assessment by class and Schedule 22 levies; the City is absent from the 2023, 2024 and 2025 files — Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Ontario) · openA
- Ontario Builder Directory — licensee records and possession counts (api/builders, api/buildersummary) — Home Construction Regulatory Authority · openA
- Ontario's housing supply: January – December 2024 — Hamilton 47,000 / 10,196 / 3,917 / 2,384 / 60.86% / Not met — Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Ontario) · openA
- 2025 Annual Information Form — "11 Clappison Avenue, Waterdown", 71,424 sq ft Canadian Tire GLA plus 21,746 sq ft other CTC banner, 100% occupancy, lease expiry 2030; portfolio 31,709,453 sq ft across 378 properties — CT Real Estate Investment Trust · openA
- Flamboro Downs Racing — "967 Highway #5 West, Dundas ON L9H 5E2", establishing that the racetrack is in the former Town of Dundas and not in Waterdown — Great Canadian Entertainment · openA
- City Properties, Community Boundaries and Urban Boundary — ArcGIS feature services (2,307 City parcels with area in acres, ward and community; the six former municipalities; the city's urban boundary) — City of Hamilton · openA