Who is eligible to receive the First Time Home Buyer Rebate?
In order to receive the First Time Home Buyer rebate, you are required to meet all the following requirements:
- Buyer must be at least 18 years of age
- Buyer must be a Permanent Resident or Citizen of Canada
- Buyer must occupy the home as a principal residence within 9 months of the date of the transfer
- Buyer must not have owned a home or an interest in a home anywhere in the world, and Buyer’s spouse must not have owned a home or an interest in a home anywhere in the world while he or she was the Buyer’s spouse
No land transfer tax is payable by qualifying first‑time purchasers on the first $368,000 of the value of the consideration for eligible homes. First‑time purchasers of homes greater than $368,000 would receive a maximum refund of $4,000.
The first-time home purchase rebate applies to:
– Newly constructed – Resale residential properties
The rebate does not apply to:
– Commercial, industrial or multi-residential properties
With respect to spouses, the eligibility for the First-Time Homebuyer Refund will depend on whether the spouses have owned a home together while they were each other’s spouse. If both spouses have previously owned a property, whether or not such property was owned during marriage, none of them will qualify for the First-Time Homebuyer Refund. The method of acquiring the home (e.g., purchase, gift or through an inheritance) is not relevant. If one of the spouses has previously owned a home and the other hasn’t, then the question will be whether the spouse who has owned a home has owned the property during the time they were spouses of one another. If the answer to this question is a yes, then none of them will qualify for a First-Time Homebuyer Refund. If the answer is no, which would be the case if the spouse who has previously owned a home sold the property before becoming the spouse of the other, then they will both qualify for the First-Time Homebuyer Refund on a transfer that has both their names on it as transferees.
The definition of spouse for the purposes of the First-Time Homebuyer Refund is on the basis of the definition in section 29 of the Family Law Act. This definition includes:
- two persons who are married to each other
- two persons who have together entered into a marriage that is voidable or void, in good faith on the part of a person relying on this clause to assert any right
- two persons who are not married to each other and have cohabited continuously for a period of not less than 3 years
- two persons who are not married to each other and have cohabited in a relationship of some permanence, if they are the natural or adoptive parents of a child
If one of the multiple buyers is the only first-time home buyer, and purchases a 30% of the property, he/she is eligible to benefit from the first-time homebuyer refund, but only to the extent that he/she owns the property. So in this case, he/she would be limited to 30% of the refund on the property.
If it can be shown that the reason for listing one of the buyers was following the insistence of a bank as part of a mortgage agreement and that the Non-first-time homebuyer did not acquire a beneficial interest in the property, the buyers may apply to the Ministry of Finance for a refund, following payment of the tax amount
