The short answer
A newly built home bought from a builder in Alberta attracts 5% GST. Alberta has no provincial sales tax, so 5% is the whole of it — there is no HST here and no provincial component layered on top.
A resale home is generally not GST-taxable. Used residential housing is treated differently from new construction, which is why nobody talks about GST when you buy a 1998 house in Evergreen and everybody talks about it in a showhome.
Federal rebates can reduce or eliminate the GST on a new home. Which one applies, and whether you get anything, depends on the price and on whether you are a first-time buyer.
The first question to ask a builder
Not "is there GST" — there is. The question is: is the price you just quoted me GST-included, and does it assume I qualify for a rebate?
Alberta builders commonly quote a price that is GST-included net of the rebate, meaning the builder has assumed the rebate applies and credited it to you at closing. That is normal and legitimate. It also means that if you turn out not to qualify — because the home is not your primary residence, for example — the amount can come back to you as an adjustment.
Get the answer in the contract wording, not in conversation. This is precisely the sort of clause that a lawyer reading your builder agreement will flag. Why a lawyer reads it, not us.
The general GST New Housing Rebate
The long-standing federal rebate works like this, per CRA:
- It refunds 36% of the GST paid, to a maximum of $6,300.
- The full rebate is available where the home's fair market value is $350,000 or less.
- Between $350,000 and $450,000 the rebate is progressively reduced.
- At $450,000 or more, no GST New Housing Rebate is available.
Those thresholds have not moved in a long time, and in Calgary that has a blunt consequence: for new detached houses, this rebate is now largely irrelevant, because very little new detached construction here lands under $450,000. Where it still matters is at the entry end of new construction — new apartment condos and some new townhouses.
If a builder's price sheet shows a rebate credit on a $700,000 house, ask which rebate. The general New Housing Rebate does not reach that price.
The first-time home buyers' GST rebate
A separate and much larger federal measure exists for first-time buyers of new housing. CRA describes it as providing a rebate of 100% of the GST on qualifying new homes valued up to $1 million, with a partial rebate phasing out between $1 million and $1.5 million. It operates alongside the general New Housing Rebate as a top-up where both apply.
Eligibility turns on who you are, what you are buying, and the dates involved — when the agreement was entered into, when construction began, and when ownership transfers. Those conditions are specific and they are the whole ballgame. We have a dedicated page on it: the first-time buyer GST rebate. Confirm your own eligibility with CRA or your accountant before you count on it.
Three situations that catch people out
- Buying new to rent it out. The New Housing Rebate is for a home that will be a primary place of residence for you or a relation. If you are buying new as a rental, that rebate does not apply — there is a separate New Residential Rental Property rebate with its own rules, and you generally claim it yourself rather than having the builder credit it. Do not let a builder's net-of-rebate price assume otherwise.
- Substantially renovated homes. A home that has been substantially renovated can be treated like new construction for GST purposes. "Substantially" has a technical meaning; a kitchen and two bathrooms is not it. If you are buying a gutted-and-rebuilt inner-city house from someone who did it as a business, ask.
- Owner-built. If you build or substantially renovate your own home, there is an owner-built version of the rebate with its own form, its own calculation and its own deadlines. It is claimed by you, not by a builder.
The Alberta context
It is worth putting the 5% in perspective before it frightens anybody off new construction. Alberta charges no land transfer tax — Land Titles registration is $50 plus $5 per $5,000 of value, on the transfer and again on the mortgage. Alberta has no provincial sales tax at all. And mortgage default insurance premiums carry provincial sales tax in Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan only — not here.
So the Alberta new-build buyer pays a 5% federal tax on the house and almost nothing else in transaction taxes, where a buyer in several other provinces pays both. The comparison in full.
Who to ask
We are REALTORS®, not accountants, and none of this is tax advice. GST on housing is a technical area where the answer turns on facts specific to you and to the contract. The authoritative sources are CRA's guide RC4028 for the New Housing Rebate and CRA's first-time home buyers' GST/HST rebate pages; the right people to advise you are your accountant and the lawyer reading your purchase agreement.
What we can do is make sure the GST question is settled in writing before you sign, rather than discovered on your statement of adjustments. What a statement of adjustments is · buying new construction in Calgary.