cov-canuck

We are looking to buy a new build house in Milton, Ontario, but are completely flummoxed about hidden costs, etc. Can anyone shed some light?

e.g. If the house is advertised at $300,000 inc. GST, I would imagine there is no negotiating on a new house (never bought a new one in the UK either, so not sure).

We've been told you don't pay PST, but do have to pay a land transfer tax. What other fees are involved as a buyer (with no house to sell)?

One guy today told us that as first time buyers in Canada we can claim GST back, someone else said no, that wasn't the case, but we could claim back up to $2000 of the land transfer tax for the same reason...?

What are averages of legal fees, inspections, etc.?

Thanks in advance.

andy_sheila

Not sure about Ontario but as a 1st time buyer in NS you can get 10% of the HST (PST + GST) up to a maximum of $1500 + you can get an additional 6% of the GST. eg on a $300,000 home, you would get back about $6500.

sara76

Hi there is always negotiansin any new build house. I am not sure what it is like where you want ot go but here in the Durham region there are loads of builders that are all offering different things & competing with one another, I would go ask them & see what incentives they take. I would never bother taking the free appliances as they either say free appliances or $5000 in upgrades or off the price etc, Take the upgrades as the aplliances are not worth that much & are usually just the bog standard white ones & you may want silver or in stainless etc. The fees you pay are the closing fees, ie solicitors costs which are around about $3000k Land transfer tax is usually if you are sellingas a first time buyer I don't think you have to pay it, but I can't remember 100% as we were going to buy but then changed our minds just before the 5 day clause was up as we had bad mortgage advice.

andy_sheila

$3,000 for lawyers fees ??????? you might have got bad mortgage advice but you must of got the very, very, best legal advice for that cost.
On our first house we paid $800 in legal fees and $550 on our 2nd house.

sara76

No no, our realtor told us that that is the 'average; closing fee's'. As for the mortgage advice, we were told by various realtors that we only needed 5% down so we pulled ebough money out of our equity in our house int he UK (we still have it rent it out) but when we started the buying process we were told that we we actually needed 10% as we were not landed yet (work visas), so our mortgage advisdor told us (she was a dodgy thing from TD) that we could get a line of credit then role it in to the mortgage the following year. Figures sounded good, all stacked up on the old affordability thing. So we found a house, I called her & asked if we had been pre-approved the mortgage she said yes, I said what about the line of credit, she also said yes. So we put an offer in on a house, then it was accepted. Then day 4 of the whole 5 day process she said that we did not have the line of credit & to put it on our credit card, whish we politely said 'No thanks' well I think it was a bit cheeky of her to ask us to put $20k on a credit card. So we told her to get a a 95% mortgage so she approached a friend, fine but we had to ask the sellers for an extra days grace. Then the next day this friend wanted all our credit reports, bank statements (she had them). We told her when we applied for our credit report online in the UK before we left that they would not do it as it was long & they would post it to us which took 2 weeks & our report had changed by then as with the money we pulled from our house we also paid off loads & did not have the cars on there aymore. So we found that week very stressful so in the end said forget it, we will wait until next year as it is not as if we could use the pool this year.
So still renting, think we will just hibernate now until the spring.

Sara

andy_sheila

Seems like you not only found a bad banker but also a bad realtor. $3000 could be about right for total closing cost, depending on the property tax and oil tank settlement, but it is way too much for just legal fees.
I hope you have better luck in the future.

Steve_P

Have to agree with the above.

This info is five years old, so not totally up to date.

When we sold a property we owned in Lethbridge in 2001 the legal fees including all disbursements and GST came to $462.76 a far cry from $3000.

The only other cost was the real estate commission $5090.53

Cheers
Steve

sara76

Ithink it also reflects on the price of the property & may even differ from province to provine, well they do with taxes. I know that you don't have to pay realtor fee's for buying, so intending on buying not selling for a very long time! However knowing me we probably will!


Sara

Steve_P

When we were quoted the lawyers rates the price of the property never once came up.

Rate quoted was $350 plus all fees, disbursements and GST.

Steve

MB-Realtor

For GST on New Homes go here:-

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/individ...ntially-e.html

Remember: Everything is negotiable, if you don't ask for a discount you won't get one. The worst that will happen is they say no.

Closing costs when buying vary, I know only Manitoba, without knowing the full details the best I can do is say that generally buyers closing costs are between 3% and 5% of the purchase price.

cov-canuck

Thanks for all your help, it's given us food for thought. Now from what I've read, it looks like we may qualify for a partial GST/HST refund as purchasers of a new home, but we wouldn't qualify for the refund of Land Transfer Tax because we owned a home in England before moving here (we sold it back in April) so are not really first time buyers.

andy_sheila

In NS you get the 1st time buyers rebate, it doesn't matter what you had/did in England. You also get it if it has been over 5 yrs since you qwned a house in Canada

SAW 04

Andy

Would you mind letting me know how we go about this refund. We were not even aware this option existed.

Steve

torticat

Steve

Your builder should have arranged all the paperwork and liaised with your solicitor. I will look for internet links on it later as i'm sure i have one from when we completed.

Ian

SAW 04

Ian,

Are you referring to the HST rebate to builder on any build or to the NS first time buyer rebate mentioned by Andy? Or are these the same thing?