While land transfer taxes and new property assessments in key markets appear to have little effect on the surface, eroding affordability levels are slowly shifting migration patterns and changing the landscape in major Canadian centres, according to the RE/MAX 2024 Taxes & Canadian Real Estate Report.

Report Highlights

  • Tax rate increases, in tandem with record-high housing values and mortgage rates, have sparked a post-pandemic exodus from the country’s most expensive markets, contributing to a significant uptick in interprovincial migration numbers in Alberta and Atlantic Canada in 2023.
  • The average Canadian family pays 45.3% of its income to taxes. That’s more than the 35.6% spent on necessities of life.
  • 28% of Canadians agree that the land transfer tax has impacted their decision to participate in the housing market.

Regional Insights

  • Greater Vancouver Area: The tax burden weighs most heavily on buyers in markets such as the Greater Vancouver Area where housing values are amongst the highest in the country. Yet first time, move up, and downsizing buyers remain determined to move forward, regardless of tax implications.
  • Calgary: Home-buying activity continues at a frenzied pace in the Calgary area as affordable housing values and lower tax rates incentivize an increasing number of out-of-province buyers to move to Alberta.
  • Winnipeg: A significant uptick in housing sales and values in the last six weeks of 2023 has set the stage for home-buying activity in Winnipeg in 2024.
  • Greater Toronto Area: After a flurry of home-buying activity at luxury price points in the final quarter of 2023 in Toronto Proper due to upcoming changes to the city’s 2024 land transfer taxes, the housing market has slowed in the Greater Toronto Area.
  • Montreal: While higher interest rates and the threat of a recession seriously hampered home-buying activity in Montreal over the past year, housing taxes – in the form of a welcome tax and property tax – proved to be a negligible part of the equation in 2023.
  • Halifax: With housing market uncertainty seeping into January 2024, homebuyers in Halifax are banking of the prospect of lower interest rates down the road to revitalize home-buying activity.

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