athena88

Im strongly considering moving to Canada next year and Nova Scotia is top of my list so far.
Can anyone tell me how much utility and grocery bills are compared to the UK. Do they have a form of council tax.
we will also need to purchase things like washing machines,tv's and general household furniture. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

swoops

Check out the link for some good Info...http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Category:Canada

Silverdragon102

Maybe able to give you a rough idea once we are out there in a few weeks but when we bought the house we asked that washing machine, cooker and fridge be included in the sale and they are

athena88

good luck hope all goes well for you.
any info would be great.

Paul Wildy

For groceries I would take whatever you spend currently in the UK and multiply that by the exchange rate. In other words its about the same. Some things are cheaper but other things are more expensive too. If your UK grocery bill is 100 pounds per week chances are it will be around $200 per week in Nova Scotia.

Council Tax here is called Property Tax. Its based on the value of your property but unlike the UK there arent bands - its based on the actual "assessed value" of your own home. The assessed value is usually a bit less than what you actually paid for it but not always. Typically the assessed value lags behind the actual value by a year or so. So if you spend $300k you might find your assessed value is around $270k (just as a really rough guide). The assessed value is then multiplied by the rate for that area. In Halifax metro its about $1.18 for every $100 of assessed value (so the $300k house above might have annual property tax of $3,186 per year).

In some rural areas the rate os lower (say $0.90 for every $100 of assessed value) but in small towns away from Halifax where property prices are lower the rates can be quite high - over $2 per $100 in some cases. So if you buy an expensive house (say $500k price but assessed at $450k) in Pictou for example your annual property tax could be as much as $10k per year!

The rates for different regions are published here: http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/muns/fin/tax/default.asp

I think you will find furniture prices similar to the UK. Generally its cheaper to ship your stuff over than replace everything once here. Electrical appliances are generally less here although for some reason front-loading washers and dryers are seen as "premium" here (they are to be fair about twice the size of UK equivalents) and are quite expensive - expect to spend over $2000 for the pair or opt for the less prestigous top-loading models.

Hope this helps.