Does the home have to be my primary residence for the HST rebate?

Yes, and it is the condition most often treated as a formality when it is actually the load-bearing one.

What is required

Both the federal rebate and the Ontario ENHR require that the home be the primary place of residence of the buyer or a relation of the buyer, and that this person be the first occupant of the home.

Two separate tests, both of which have to hold.

“Primary place of residence”

This means the home where you ordinarily live, the address on your identification, where your mail goes, where you actually sleep most nights. It is not satisfied by intending to use it sometimes, by keeping it available, or by staying there occasionally while living mainly somewhere else.

CRA looks at intention at the time you signed, and at what actually happened afterward. Both matter. A genuine change of circumstances is different from a plan that was never real.

“A relation”

The rebate survives if a qualifying relation lives there instead of you, a parent buying for a child, for instance. “Relation” has a specific meaning in the legislation, and it is narrower than “family friend.” If your plan involves someone other than you occupying the home, confirm that person qualifies before you sign the rebate forms.

“First occupant”

The home must not have been lived in before you or your relation moves in. This is why rental purchases fail: a tenant moving in first breaks the test, and no later change fixes it.

The change-of-plan problem

This is the real-world version of the question. You bought intending to live there. Three years later, at closing, your job moved, or rates moved, or your family grew, and now you want to rent it out.

The consequences are immediate and financial:

• You are no longer eligible for the owner-occupied rebates.
• The builder’s assignment fails, and they bill you the rebate amount at closing, up to $80,000 provincially.
• You can claim the NRRP rebate instead, but you pay first and recover months later.

What you must not do is sign the occupancy declaration anyway. Those forms are sworn. Tell your lawyer the truth and deal with the consequence. It is a cash-flow problem, which is survivable. The alternative is a misrepresentation problem, which is not.

If your plans have shifted and you are not sure where that leaves you, let’s work out the actual numbers.