The short answer
Alberta charges no land transfer tax. What you pay instead is a Land Titles registration fee, which is a small administrative charge rather than a tax.
The registration fee is $50 plus $5 for every $5,000 of property value. On a $700,000 purchase that is roughly $750. There is a separate, similarly structured fee to register a mortgage.
By comparison, land transfer tax on a $700,000 home in Ontario or British Columbia runs into five figures — and in Toronto a municipal land transfer tax applies on top of the provincial one. For a relocating family this is frequently the largest single difference in the cost of closing.
What you do pay when buying in Calgary
- Legal fees and disbursements — your lawyer handles title transfer, registration and the payout of the seller's mortgage.
- Land Titles registration — as above, for both the transfer and the mortgage.
- Home inspection — optional, and worth it on almost every resale purchase.
- Lender appraisal — where the lender requires one.
- Mortgage default insurance — if your down payment is under 20%. In Alberta the premium is subject to provincial insurance tax, payable at closing rather than added to the mortgage.
- Property tax and utility adjustments — reimbursing the seller for anything they have prepaid past your possession date.
- Real Property Report or title insurance — commonly a seller obligation in Alberta, but confirm it in the contract.
- GST — on new construction only, not on resale homes.
One more Alberta difference worth knowing
Alberta is also the only province with no provincial sales tax — you pay the 5% federal GST and nothing on top. That does not affect a resale home purchase, but it affects everything you buy to put in it.
We mention this on almost every relocation call, because buyers arriving from Ontario or BC have usually budgeted for a land transfer tax that does not exist here. It is a pleasant conversation to have.