A row house sits on its own property. A town house is part of a strata.

Most differentiate row homes as not having shared party walls. For example in Montreal you could knock down an old brownstone row home in the middle of a row, and the rest would still function just fine. Though there is no set in stone definition

In the current legislature, the difference you are referring to is just called fee simple. So you could have fee simple townhomes, or row homes.

Province just changed the rules to allow wall-sharing fee simple. Now we just need to fix our zoning to allow them to built in all the "single family only" zones in the city.

They were actually previously allowed, but the legal hurdles particularly related to fires were very onerous so there was very little desire to go down that road. Recently, as you have alluded to, the government has taken steps to make that process much easier for those interested in pursuing fee simple town homes. (or any 0 lot line fee simple residential units which would also include row homes)

With the City of Victoria's 75% fee of the uplift value on rezoned or amended properties, SFH lots, with side yards or not, are far more valuable and would therefore necessitate a much higher premium paid back to the City.

So for what is effectively a townhome other than the strata fee you'll be paying more for the product, higher taxes, and your own maintenance on top of it all. So my sense is it's simply not doable.

Im not sure I follow you here, the land lift would be very similar to a developer picking up 4 lots and then building a series of strata titled townhomes like they currently do. In both cases the developer will be rezoning the land and paying the CAC

A fee-simple property (referring literally to fully unrestricted usage of the property and the structure by the occupant [i.e. equal to a single-family-dwelling and its property]) is more valuable than a townhome, therefore the kick-back to the City of Victoria would be higher, wouldn't it? I might be wrong here.

Fee-simple is more expensive to construct, btw, mostly due to individual hook-ups to utilities, thicker walls between units, etc.

A fee-simple property (referring literally to fully unrestricted usage of the property and the structure by the occupant [i.e. equal to a single-family-dwelling and its property]) is more valuable than a townhome, therefore the kick-back to the City of Victoria would be higher, wouldn't it? I might be wrong here.

Fee-simple is more expensive to construct, btw, mostly due to individual hook-ups to utilities, thicker walls between units, etc.

There isn't a lot of evidence yet on what premium people are willing to pay for fee simple ownership of townhomes locally yet. Some value the freedom, while other are burdened by the responsibility. As you mention though higher costs may offset the higher sale price. Land lift is calculated from the land residual, so it would take into account revenue and costs of a potential project. So its hard to say if the land lift would be much different in the end. Personally I don't think it would be much.

In regards to your second comment, yes there are some additional costs. However the need for individual hookups was one of the issues recently addressed by the provincial government, and it can now be avoided through different agreements (i apologize i don't remember the specifics).

But, stratifying units as well is not without its costs as well. Lawyers and surveyors make a good chunk of change throughout the process

That's attica, that sheds a lot of light on this issue.

This development can be marked 'completed'.