Don’t get too excited if you have saved the down payment for your “average-priced” $1.3 million Toronto property. With government charges and fees on new homes across Canada and the United States, the GTA-based Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) found that Toronto homeowners face three times the fee that New Yorkers are required to pay.
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Recently commissioned data researchers from the Altus group examined various residential home markets across six GTA municipalities, four Canadian cities (Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary) and six American metropolitan areas (New York, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Houston and San Francisco.)
What they didn’t expect was for Toronto to beat them all!
"Based on our review, we have found that the average government‐imposed charges on new homes are significantly higher in the Greater Toronto Area than they are in both other Canadian urban areas, and in the U.S. metro areas," the report read.
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"Government‐imposed charges in the GTA are, on average, over 3‐times higher on a per unit basis than they are on average in the six U.S. metropolitan areas, and roughly 1.75‐times higher than in the other Canadian urban areas," wrote the researchers. They also noted that the fees were especially dramatic for low-rise residential housing.
When it comes to Toronto high-rise developments, those charges are actually 50 per cent higher than the same fees in any of the surveyed U.S. cities – and 30 per cent higher than in other Canadian cities.
"A major driver why the U.S. metro area charges are lower than both the GTA and other Canadian urban areas is that the US metropolitan areas surveyed do not impose sales taxes on new housing, whereas in Canada, the sales tax included on new homes (before rebates can be applied) ranges from 5 per cent to almost 15 per cent," a representative from BILD explained.
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But the biggest reason cited was “the high development charge costs imposed on new homes [in Toronto] which are approaching $100,000 per unit in some jurisdictions."
With all this bad news for would-be homeowners in Toronto, there seems to be no shortage of people who still wish to reside there. A recent survey by Finder found that Toronto is the number one city that Canadians want to move to.
Strange times!
