Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

Fees on homes

A colleague of mine sent me this Bloomberg article today and said, “Here’s an article about things you already know.” The article cites a recent report by Altus Group that compared government-related fees on new housing across Canada and the U.S. What they discovered will not surprise any of you who are in the industry: Toronto has some of the highest government-imposed charges on new homes.

For new condo apartments, the report found that government charges can add up to as much as C$124,582 per unit. That’s about 50% higher than the average unit in the U.S. and about 30% higher than the average unit in Canada (see above chart for the list of cities). While all of us in the industry can appreciate this, I don’t think most homeowners and tenants understand this. Hopefully they’re reading this post.

Chart: Bloomberg

3 responses to “Fees on homes”

  1. Tbone Avatar
    Tbone

    Maybe other cities are just have theirs lower to attract more development while Toronto’s are actually set appropriately to pay for necessary cities services and their fair share?

    1. Brandon Graham Donnelly Avatar

      what do you think of Jakob’s comment?

  2. Jakob P. Avatar
    Jakob P.

    I think it’s also relevant in this context that Toronto has the lowest property tax rates in Ontario (e.g. https://www.zoocasa.com/blog/ontario-property-tax-rates-2019/), and on a federal level is only beaten out by some places in BC (https://www.zoocasa.com/blog/how-property-tax-differs-across-canada-infographic/).

    It looks like Toronto has decided to shift the tax burden more on the creation of new homes so it can keep property tax rates low.

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