The First-Time Home Buyers' GST Rebate

At or below one million dollars the rebate can cover the entire GST, capped at fifty thousand dollars. Between one million and one and a half million the maximum rebate reduces proportionally with the price.

The Canada Revenue Agency's own worked example is a home at one and a quarter million, which sits at the midpoint of that band and so qualifies for half of the fifty thousand maximum, giving twenty-five thousand dollars. The reduction applies to the maximum rebate, not to the GST you paid, which is the part most summaries get wrong.

The test is stricter than most people assume and it is not about whether you have ever owned a home. You must not have lived in a home that you or your spouse or common-law partner owned, in Canada or anywhere else, as your primary residence in the calendar year of the transfer or in the previous four calendar years.

So someone who sold a home they lived in three years ago does not qualify, even though they own nothing now. The Canada Revenue Agency publishes worked examples of exactly this, and they are worth reading against your own timeline.

The agreement of purchase and sale with the builder must be signed on or after 20 March 2025 and before 2031. That is a condition about the contract date, not the completion date.

There are further conditions about when construction begins and completes, and the home must be your primary place of residence. Confirm the full set against the CRA page rather than against any summary, including this one.

A rebate that is full below one million and gone at one and a half million creates a genuine reason to look hard at the lower end of your range, in the same way the newly built home property transfer tax exemption does at a different threshold.

Those two thresholds do not line up, which means the total tax picture changes at several points as the price rises. The worked examples page puts real numbers on that.