White Rock, British Columbia
White Rock is 5.17 square kilometres of view: $10.90 billion of its $14.31 billion taxable assessment is land and only $3.42 billion is buildings, the whole city raised $23,638 of light-industry tax in 2025, and the two biggest things on its waterfront are owned by a government and an American railroad. The shopping centre that carries the Semiahmoo name is in Surrey, and so is the Semiahmoo reserve.
8 buildings · 5 with an owner established · 13 sources · 1 tier B · 7 tier A · 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. The Land Owner Transparency Registry is the free half: since 30 November 2020 corporations, trusts and partnerships registering an interest in BC land must name the individuals behind them, search opened 30 April 2021, and a search of the publicly accessible part is priced NIL. A municipal tax certificate for White Rock through LTSA's Tax Certificates Online is $130.26, the fourth highest of the 90 participating municipalities on that table. Unlike Port Moody and Sidney, White Rock publishes no table of its largest registered owners; what it does publish, in its five-year financial plan, is every permissive tax exemption by roll number and organisation, and that is the only owner list the city produces.
Is ownership public?Public, but one paid search at a time
Cost of one title search$11.06 — "For a search under section 377 or a copy of the search results, or both", listed as "Title Search" on the LTSA Customer Fee Listing 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 through LTSA's Tax Certificates Online is $130.26 for "White Rock, City".
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White Rock Pier Marine Drive at the foot of Bayview Avenue, White Rock 470 metres long |
Civic | City of White Rock "The iconic White Rock Pier crowns the City's waterfront and is Canada's longest wooden pier at 470 metres", and the City budgets and builds it: the 2026–2030 capital plan carries "Pier Restoration Completion" at $7,875 of 2025 actual spending and $30,000,000 budgeted for 2026, the single largest line in the plan, and the 2026 operating budget reflects anticipated grant funding for it. Council's objectives include "Reconstruct the remainder of the pier". The plan never addresses the tenure of the foreshore and seabed beneath, which in BC is provincial Crown land: the pier is the City's, the ground under it is not established. |
Government | —B |
| BNSF Railway waterfront corridor Roll 006331.000, City of White Rock |
Land | Burlington Northern & Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Company The city's own exemption list establishes a US Class I railroad as a White Rock property holder. "Permissive Tax Exemptions Issued 2025", in the 2026–2030 Financial Plan, names "Burlington Northern & Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Company" against roll 006331.000 with $22,244 of municipal taxes and $792 of Fraser Valley Regional Library levy forgone — 11.2% of the $198,297 the city forgoes across all 27 exempted rolls, and the only commercial entity on a list otherwise made of churches, clubs and health charities. The City separately records that "the waterfront is home to a railway used by BNSF (Burlington Northern Sante Fe) Railway". |
Public company | —A |
| Peace Arch Hospital 15521 Russell Avenue |
Institutional | Not established a paid title search would answer it The hospital is in White Rock — the BC geocoder resolves 15521 Russell Avenue to a point inside the legal city boundary — but no document opened names who holds title. It does not appear on the city's permissive exemption list, because a hospital is exempt statutorily rather than permissively. White Rock's roll carries $382,417,739 of exempt land and $204,413,963 of exempt improvements in 2025, $586.8 million in all, and the financial plan attributes none of it to a named body. The City records that it "partners with the Division of Family Practice, Fraser Health Authority, Heart and Stroke" on programming, which is a service relationship and not a statement about land. |
Not established | —A |
| Peace Arch Hospital & Community Health Foundation holdings Rolls 002695.000, 002696.000, 002697.000, 002699.000 and 002700.000 |
Institutional | Peace Arch Hospital & Community Health Foundation Five separate roll numbers on the city's 2025 permissive exemption list, with $6,846, $7,177, $14,275, $6,996 and $6,726 of municipal taxes forgone — $42,020 in total, the largest holding of any single body on the list and 21.2% of all municipal tax White Rock forgoes. A sixth line names the Peace Arch Hospital Auxiliary Society at roll 001789.000 for $8,690. The list gives roll numbers and organisations and no civic addresses, so which five properties these are is not established. The hospital itself is not among them. |
Institution | —A |
| White Rock City Hall and the Community Hub site 15322 Buena Vista Avenue |
Civic | City of White Rock The City's 2025 highlights record that it "Delivered extensive public engagement for the Community Hub Project and received Council endorsement of Buena Vista Site for new Community Hub". The plan states the Hub "is intended to replace the City's existing 1962 City Hall and consolidate core civic services into a resilient and accessible facility capable of maintaining municipal operations during emergency events"; $310,642 was spent in 2025 and $992,000 is budgeted over 2026 and 2027 for feasibility and schematic design toward a Class B cost estimate, with $11,538,000 held in the Community Hub reserve. City Hall is at 15322 Buena Vista Avenue, which geocodes inside the city. |
Government | —A |
| White Rock Players' Club Roll 002603.000, City of White Rock |
Institutional | White Rock Players' Club The largest single permissive exemption line in the city: $33,004 of municipal taxes and $1,175 of library levy forgone in 2025, 16.6% of the municipal total. A community theatre company is the biggest individual beneficiary of White Rock's exemption bylaw — larger than any one of the five hospital-foundation rolls, larger than the BNSF corridor and larger than any church. The list gives no address. |
Institution | —A |
| Semiahmoo Shopping Centre 1711 152 Street — City of Surrey, NOT White Rock |
Retail | Not established a paid title search would answer it Recorded only to correct the obvious assumption, as the Duncan record does for Duncan Centre. The BC geocoder resolves 1711 152 Street to the City of Surrey and point-in-polygon against the province's legal boundary layer confirms it falls outside White Rock. White Rock's largest shopping centre is not in White Rock, and neither is the Semiahmoo reserve: the province's reserve boundary layer returns SEMIAHMOO at 127.2 ha immediately west of the city, in Surrey. White Rock contains no reserve land and the federal register records no Crown-owned federal property inside it at all. |
Not established | —A |
| Miramar Village towers Johnston Road and Russell Avenue, White Rock |
Mixed use | Not established a paid title search would answer it The city's largest residential towers, and the City has a recorded financial interest in them without the document saying what it is: the 2026 fiscal services budget notes a "2026 decrease due to reduced Miramar towers common area expenses", and a "Miramar Plaza Committee" sits among the bodies the City's community services division supports. Common-area expenses paid by a municipality indicate an owned or leased interest in a strata development; the financial plan does not state which, gives no roll or address, and no entity is named. No source opened establishes who owns the towers or the plaza. |
Not established | —A |
2
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
White Rock is the clearest case in this batch of a city whose value is the ground rather than what is on it: $10.90 billion of land against $3.42 billion of improvements, 76.1% of taxable assessment in the dirt. It has effectively no industry — $23,638 of light-industry tax in 2025 against $51.19 million residential — no farm class, no major industry, no managed forest land, and no Crown-owned federal property. What it has is 25,129 people on 5.17 square kilometres and 127 building permits a year. ParcelMap BC's public WFS would not answer, so no parcel count is published here.
Land against improvements$10.90B land, $3.42B improvements
Assessment for general purposes (taxable value) in the City's Comparative General Statistics: land $10,896,514,959 and improvements $3,417,678,209 in 2025, less exempt land of $382,417,739 and exempt improvements of $204,413,963, for a total of $13,727,361,466. Land is 76.1% of the gross figure. The land series runs $7.44B (2021), $9.28B (2022), $10.72B (2023), $10.60B (2024), $10.90B (2025) — up 46% in four years. Assessment per capita is $546,276.
Total assessed value, 2026 roll$12.88B
$12,875,598,756 for general municipal purposes on the 2026 roll: residential $12,180,105,914, business and other $683,341,002, utilities $4,624,240, recreation and non-profit $4,900,000 and light industry $2,627,600. Major industry, managed forest land and farm are all nil. BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Local Government Statistics Schedule 701 — a lower figure than the City's own because it is the general-municipal taxable base on a different roll date.
What industry is left$23,638 of light-industry tax
The City's Comparative Taxation Statistics for 2025: residential $51,185,723, business and other $5,848,361, utility $367,596, recreational/non-profit $23,299 and light industry $23,638, plus a utility levy in lieu of taxes of $287,286 and a business improvement area levy of $378,271. Total current taxes including school and other government levies $58,114,174; total taxes and fees $76,708,067, or $3,053 per capita. Light industry raises less than the recreation and non-profit class.
City-owned land and land improvements$46,491,275
Net book value at 31 December 2025, up $405,789 on the year, within total tangible capital assets of $181,703,982 (2024: $172,161,198). The City's note adds that "Tangible Capital Assets are recorded at historical cost, net of accumulated amortization, and therefore do not reflect current replacement values, which are significantly higher". Buildings and facilities are carried at $22,891,904, water infrastructure at $33,911,230 and assets under construction at $9,290,910.
Permissive exemptions, 2025$198,297 across 27 rolls
"Permissive Tax Exemptions Issued 2025" in the 2026–2030 Financial Plan, by roll number and organisation, with municipal and Fraser Valley Regional Library figures: $198,297 municipal and $7,058 library. The largest lines are the White Rock Players' Club $33,004, Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway $22,244, the Roman Catholic Church $14,716, the Peace Arch Hospital & Community Health Foundation $42,020 across five rolls, Sources Community Resources Society $11,586, the Peace Arch Curling Club $10,438 and St. John's Presbyterian Church $10,335.
Whole-city turnover, 2025547 sales, $629.0M
547 market transactions in the City of White Rock across 2025 — 523 residential, 24 commercial, none industrial — with total fair market value of $629,039,395 and $11,006,452 of property transfer tax paid. BC Ministry of Finance property transfer tax data 2025, municipal monthly file, jurisdiction 236. The corporate-transaction count is suppressed as "nr" in 11 of the 12 months, the most heavily suppressed of the four municipalities in this batch.
Population, area and permits25,129 people on 5.17 km2; 127 permits
The City's own statistics give population 25,129 for both 2025 and 2024 on a 2024 Metro Vancouver estimate, against 21,939 at the 2021 Census, and land area 5.17 km2 unchanged across five years. Schedule 201 gives 511 ha of land, 922 ha of water and 1,433 ha in total — nearly two thirds of the municipality is water. Building permits: 127 in 2025 worth $48,531,794, against 201 worth $104,112,899 in 2024 and 145 worth $157,038,181 in 2021. Debt is $18,791,925, or $748 per capita.
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.
White Rock has no large landowner, and that is the finding. There is no Crown-owned federal property in the city at all — the federal register holds only a leased RCMP detachment at 15299 Pacific Avenue and a breakwater occupied without an interest. There is no reserve land inside it. There is no major industry, no farm class and no managed forest land on its roll. The city holds $46.5 million of land and land improvements; a hospital foundation holds five rolls; an American railway holds the waterfront corridor; and 25,129 people hold the rest between them, which no public dataset will name.
| Name | Type | Holding |
|---|---|---|
| City of White Rock Net book value at 31 December 2025 within $181,703,982 of total tangible capital assets. The City holds the pier, the promenade, the Buena Vista City Hall site endorsed for the new Community Hub, and $11,538,000 in the Community Hub reserve. It records that negotiations on "land purchase, sale, contracts, land title registration" are handled in closed session. |
Government | $46,491,275 of land and land improvementsA |
| Peace Arch Hospital & Community Health Foundation The largest named non-government holder of property in White Rock on any document opened here, measured by exempted rolls. A sixth roll belongs to the Peace Arch Hospital Auxiliary Society at $8,690. The list gives no addresses or areas. |
Institution | 5 exempted rolls, $42,020 of municipal taxes forgoneA |
| Burlington Northern & Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Company The waterfront rail corridor. The one linear holding in the city, and the one foreign corporate owner. |
Public company | 1 exempted roll, $22,244 of municipal taxes forgoneA |
| Government of Canada Unusual for a city of 25,129: the Directory of Federal Real Property records nothing Crown Owned in White Rock. It holds the White Rock RCMP Detachment Site at 15299 Pacific Avenue, 660 sq m, interest type "Lease or Licence", and the Whiterock Breakwater, interest type "Occupied Without an Interest" at a nominal 0.0001 ha. Both coordinates fall inside the legal city boundary. Canada is a tenant here and nothing more, and the register never names the lessor. |
Government | No Crown-owned property; 1 leased siteA |
| Semiahmoo First Nation reserve — outside the city The province's Indian Reserves and Indian Band Villages administrative boundary layer returns SEMIAHMOO at 127.2 ha immediately west of White Rock, inside the City of Surrey rather than White Rock. Reserve land is held by the Crown in right of Canada for the use and benefit of a band; it is not freehold and it is not in the provincial land title system. The City's financial plan acknowledges that it stands "on the traditional unceded territory of the Semiahmoo First Nation" and calls the white rock itself "known to the Semiahmoo First Nation as P'Quals". The record states what the layers and the City say and nothing more. |
Government | 127.2 ha, in SurreyA |
| Privately held land (owner not published) 94.6% of White Rock's 2026 general-municipal roll is residential. No public dataset names the owner of any of it, the City publishes no owner table, and the Land Owner Transparency Registry reaches only land held through a corporation, trust or partnership. In a city whose assessment is 76% land, the unanswered question is almost the whole question. |
Private company | $12.18 billion of residential assessment on the 2026 rollA |
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.
There is no housebuilding industry to name in White Rock and the city publishes no applicant list, no registered-owner table and no housing-starts series. It issued 127 building permits of all kinds in 2025 worth $48.5 million, down from 201 worth $104.1 million in 2024, and the city has been fully built out on 5.17 square kilometres for years — which is why 76% of its assessment is land. The only housing-related entities any document opened here names are the non-profits on the exemption list. A thin list is the correct answer and the gap is named rather than filled.
| Name | Type | Municipal taxes forgone, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Sources Community Resources Society The largest social-service holding on the city's permissive exemption list after the hospital foundation's five rolls. The list names organisations against roll numbers and gives no address, so the property is not identified here. |
Institution | $11,586 at roll 004103.000A |
| The Salvation Army Named on the 2025 permissive exemption list. |
Institution | $5,326 at roll 002995.000A |
| The City of White Rock's own permit record (not a builder) The City's five-year building-permit series: 127 permits worth $48,531,794 in 2025, 201 worth $104,112,899 in 2024, 139 worth $53,315,103 in 2023, 137 worth $69,616,265 in 2022 and 145 worth $157,038,181 in 2021. The City counts permits and value and never units, so no dwelling count can be published from it. |
Government | 127 permits, $48,531,794A |
6
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
White Rock's entire non-residential tax base is $5.85 million of business and other tax plus $23,638 of light industry, on $683.3 million of business-class assessment — one twentieth of the roll. The city publishes no list of its commercial owners, and the only commercial entity named in any city document opened here is a railway that pays nothing. The shops are on Marine Drive, Johnston Road and at Five Corners; the shopping centre is in Surrey.
| Name | Type | What the city publishes |
|---|---|---|
| Burlington Northern & Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Company The only commercial company named in any White Rock document opened here, and it is named because it is exempt rather than because it pays. Roll 006331.000 on the 2025 permissive exemption list. The City describes the waterfront as "home to a railway used by BNSF" and a historic train station that houses the White Rock Museum and Archives. |
Public company | $22,244 of municipal taxes forgone, 2025A |
| White Rock Business Improvement Association The city collects a Business Improvement Area levy of $378,271 in 2025, up from $318,952 in 2021, and separately exempts the Association's own property at roll 003754.001. The levy is the only published measure of the size of White Rock's commercial district as a whole. |
Institution | $1,088 forgone at roll 003754.001; $378,271 BIA levy collectedA |
| The owners of the Marine Drive, Johnston Road and Five Corners commercial frontage Not established. White Rock publishes no principal-taxpayer table, unlike Port Moody (10 registered owners) and Sidney (27). Establishing who owns a shop on Marine Drive means buying an $11.06 title search, or a $130.26 tax certificate, parcel by parcel. The city's own description of its commercial areas is "White Rock's waterfront, Five Corners area, and Uptown". |
Private company | $683,341,002 of business-class assessment, 2026 rollA |
?
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- Who holds title to Peace Arch Hospital at 15521 Russell Avenue. The hospital is statutorily rather than permissively exempt, so it is absent from the only owner list White Rock publishes, and the city's $586.8 million of exempt land and improvements is not attributed to any named body.
- Which five properties the Peace Arch Hospital & Community Health Foundation holds. The city's exemption list gives roll numbers and organisations and no civic addresses or areas.
- Who owns the Miramar Village towers and the Miramar plaza, and what interest the City holds there. The 2026 fiscal services budget records "reduced Miramar towers common area expenses" as a City cost without naming the strata, the owner or the nature of the interest.
- The tenure of the foreshore and seabed under the White Rock Pier. The City builds, budgets and restores the pier and the financial plan never addresses the ground under it.
- Who owns the Semiahmoo Shopping Centre. It is in Surrey, not White Rock, so it is outside this record's scope; it is listed only because its name invites the error.
- ParcelMap BC parcel counts, ownership-class splits and titled-area figures for White Rock. The province's public WFS returned HTTP 504 and GeoServer connection-pool timeouts to every request over several hours.
- Any list of White Rock's largest registered owners or principal taxpayers. The city does not publish one; its exemption list is the only owner list it produces, and it names 27 rolls in a city of roughly 9,900 tax notices.
- A dwelling-unit count for new construction. White Rock counts building permits and construction value and never units, and no CMHC starts series covers it separately from Surrey.
- The highest assessed single parcel in White Rock in dollars. BC Assessment holds it and its site forbids commercial use of the data outright.
- BC publishes no price-paid file. White Rock's 2025 corporate-transaction count is suppressed as "nr" in 11 of 12 months.
§
Sources
- Fees — LTSA Customer Fee Listing as at April 1, 2026, Searches table and Tax Certificates Online participating-municipality table — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
- About the Land Owner Transparency Registry — important dates — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
- BC Assessment home page, 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
- Directory of Federal Real Property — open data extract (dfrp-rbif.xml), rows whose parcel Municipality or Metro Area names the city — Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- BC Physical Address Geocoder — GeoBC / Province of British Columbia · openA
- Municipalities — Legally Defined Administrative Areas of BC (ABMS_MUNICIPALITIES_SP), WFS, legal boundary polygons used for point-in-polygon checks — GeoBC / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- 2026–2030 Financial Plan — City of White Rock (Comparative General Statistics and Comparative Taxation Statistics; "Permissive Tax Exemptions Issued 2025" by roll number and organisation; five-year capital plan including Pier Restoration Completion and Community Hub; Municipal Property Tax Exemptions Policy #317) — City of White Rock · openA
- Indian Reserves and Indian Band Villages — Administrative Boundaries (CLAB_INDIAN_RESERVES), WFS over a box around White Rock, returning SEMIAHMOO at 127.2 ha — GeoBC / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- 2025 Financial Statement Discussion and Analysis (Appendix B) — Table 4, Tangible Capital Assets year over year — City of White Rock · openA
- Property Tax Permissive Exemptions — Community Charter section 224 and Finance Policy 317, with the multi-year confirmation requirement — City of White Rock · openA