cost of buying houses
 

what are the costs involved in buying a house
any info will be great

It obviously depends on where you are buying the house!

I can only speak for Saskatchewan.

You would have lawyers' fees
Land Titles fees
Deposit on the house of course

The lawyer's fees depend on house much the house costs - in Saskatchewan probably not much more than $500-$600 if you got a mortgage too.

Land Titles fees depend on the cost of the house too.

Depending on the type of mortgage you might have to have mortgage insurance. sometimes the mortgage company will add the insurance fee on top of the mortgage, sometimes you can pay the insurance fee up front.

You would have to arrange for insurance on the house and pay the first installment of the premium I assume.

we won´t have a mortgage we are buying outright from the proceeds of our uk house

I paid through my lawyer just over $1000 for my $130,000 condominium in 1996.

Costs we just incurred:

Relator - NONE (you do not pay for buying a house, but ouch - it is pricey when you sell!)

CMHC insurance - when you first arrive your deposit will be between 40% and 60% of the purchase price! After a year the deposit is only 5%. However, if you pay less than 25% deposit you are viewed as a bad risk and have to pay insurance. This is just added to your mortgage amount. For our $270k we had about $9k added to our mortgage :(

Property Transfer Tax - this is a BC thing. If you buy something under $275k and say that you never owned a property anywhere in the world, you don't have to pay. Otherwise it is 1% of the first $200k and 2% thereafter. So we paid around $3.7k :(

Building Inspection - way better than in the UK! We paid $300k (inc tax) the chap was here for 3 hours (and even did a minor repair !) the report was excellent and he walked us around the house pointing out everything.

Our notory was $1,200 - but our sale was a bit complicated. Usually in Vancouver expect to pay $850. Ring around and get quotes, and ask your relator :)

Hope this helps

Clare

OPPS - Typpo! We only paid $294 for the building inspection!

Clare