New homes in Toronto

What’s being built in Toronto

Toronto has very little new freehold low-rise. The city is built out and the planning framework favours density, so what appears is infill townhomes on former commercial sites rather than subdivisions. If you want new freehold within the city boundary, supply is measured in a handful of projects a year.

Communities that have launched or are actively selling here include:

• 180 Towns (Icon/Dash, Newtonbrook)
• The Woodside Collection (95 Developments, Agincourt)
• NY Walk Towns (Menkes, Lansing-Westgate)

Availability changes week to week and the best lots in any phase go early, register for access and I’ll send what’s releasing here.

Builders active in Toronto: Icon Homes, Dash Developments, Menkes, 95 Developments.

Builder choice matters more than most buyers expect. Delivery record, reliability on closing dates and how warranty items get handled vary enormously and appear on no price list. How to assess a builder.

What the rebates are worth at local prices

New low-rise here currently runs roughly $929,000 to $1,450,000, and that band decides your rebate position. Here is the arithmetic at both ends.

	At $929,000	At $1,450,000
Ontario ENHR (no first-time buyer test)	$74,320	$80,000
Federal rebate (first-time buyers only)	$46,450	$5,000

At the entry end, a home at $929,000 sits below $1,000,000, which means the full 8% Ontario rebate, $74,320, plus the full 5% federal rebate for a first-time buyer. This is the most favourable band in the whole structure.

The band here straddles $1,000,000, which is where the structure changes: above it the Ontario rebate stops growing and sits flat at $80,000, while the federal rebate begins tapering toward zero at $1,500,000. Two buyers in the same community can be in different places.

If you have owned a home before, note that the Ontario rebate still applies to you, it has no first-time buyer test, and move-up buyers routinely assume otherwise and claim nothing. Read this one.

These are illustrative maximums at the ends of the local range, not a quote. Run your own numbers.

Land transfer tax, the Toronto penalty

Buying inside the City of Toronto means paying land transfer tax twice: the Ontario tax and the City of Toronto municipal land transfer tax, on broadly similar bands.

On a $1,100,000 home that is roughly $18,475 provincially and about the same again municipally, call it $37,000 against roughly $18,475 for the identical home in Vaughan or Markham. First-time buyers can claim up to $4,000 provincially and up to $4,475 from the city, for $8,475 combined.

That gap is one of the strongest financial arguments for buying new low-rise in the 905. How land transfer tax works.

Getting around

The reason people pay the premium, subway, GO, and no commute to build a life around.