GST/HST New Housing Rebate
Remboursement de la TPS/TVH pour habitations neuves in French
Quick definition
The GST/HST New Housing Rebate refunds part of the GST or HST paid on a new or substantially renovated home bought as your primary residence. The federal portion returns up to $6,300; Ontario adds a provincial rebate of up to $24,000.
The federal rebate: 36% of the GST, with a dated ceiling
Unlike resale homes, new homes attract GST/HST. The New Housing Rebate softens that: it is available to any buyer, first-time or not, who buys a new or substantially renovated home from a builder to use as their (or a close relation's) primary residence.
The federal portion refunds 36% of the 5% GST, to a maximum of $6,300. You get the full rebate on homes priced up to $350,000; between $350,000 and $450,000 it phases out on a straight line, and at $450,000 or more it disappears entirely (as of July 2026). An honest note: those thresholds have not changed in decades, so in markets like Toronto and Vancouver, where a typical new home costs far more than $450,000, the federal rebate is often worth nothing.
The Ontario rebate: no price cap, up to $24,000
In HST provinces, the provincial part of the tax has its own rebate with its own rules. Ontario is the important one: it rebates 75% of the 8% provincial portion, up to $24,000, and crucially there is no price cap on the provincial rebate (as of July 2026). A buyer of an $800,000 new condo in Ontario gets $0 federally but still collects the full $24,000 provincially. The maximum is reached at a $400,000 price, and above that the rebate simply stays at $24,000.
The other HST provinces set their own rules, which have changed over time and differ by province, so confirm the current treatment where you are buying.
| Purchase price | Federal rebate | Ontario rebate |
|---|---|---|
| $350,000 | $6,300 | $21,000 |
| $400,000 | $3,150 | $24,000 |
| $450,000 | $0 | $24,000 |
| $800,000 | $0 | $24,000 |
Why you may never see the money: the builder takes the assignment
In practice, most buyers never file for this rebate themselves. The builder credits the rebate amount to you at closing and has you assign the rebate to them, meaning you sign your claim over and they collect it from the CRA. In exchange, the advertised price of most new homes is quoted "net of rebate": the sticker price already assumes you qualify and hands the rebate to the builder.
This surprises buyers in two directions. First, the tax and the rebate are largely invisible if everything goes normally. Second, if you do not qualify, for example because the home will be a rental rather than your primary residence, the builder will collect the rebate amount from you on top of the sticker price at closing. Read the purchase agreement's tax clauses carefully.
Owner-built homes, major renovations and rentals
If you build your own home (or hire a contractor on your own land), you can claim a comparable rebate on the GST/HST paid on construction costs. A substantial renovation can also qualify: the test is that all or substantially all of the interior, generally interpreted as about 90% of it, has been removed or replaced.
Investors buying a new home to rent out cannot use the New Housing Rebate, but a parallel program, the New Residential Rental Property Rebate (NRRPR), offers similar relief when the unit is leased to long-term tenants; the investor files for it directly after closing.
First-time buyers now have a much bigger version
Since Bill C-4 received Royal Assent on March 12, 2026, eligible first-time buyers have access to the new First-Time Home Buyers' GST Rebate: 100% of the GST back on a new home priced up to $1,000,000 (a maximum of $50,000), phasing out between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000, for qualifying builder agreements signed on or after March 20, 2025 and before 2031 (as of July 2026).
The two programs work together rather than against each other: for an eligible first-time buyer, the new rebate effectively tops up the regular rebate so that the full federal GST comes back, subject to the price limits. Everyone else keeps claiming the regular rebate described above. See first-time home buyer programs for how it stacks with the FHSA, the Home Buyers' Plan and the rest.
In Canada
The rebate exists because Canada decided in 1991 that the then-new GST should not fall fully on housing. The $350,000 and $450,000 thresholds were set with 1990s prices in mind and were never indexed, which is why the federal rebate has quietly faded out of relevance in expensive markets while Ontario's uncapped provincial rebate, and now the first-time buyers' rebate, do the real work.
In Québec, new homes attract GST plus QST, and Québec administers its own new housing rebate for the QST with its own price thresholds, alongside the federal rebate. Builders there follow the same net-of-rebate pricing convention.
Worked example
Lena buys a new $500,000 condo in Ontario as her primary residence (as of July 2026). The price is quoted net of rebates. Federally she gets nothing, since $500,000 is past the $450,000 cutoff. Provincially she qualifies for the full $24,000 Ontario rebate, which the builder credited into the sticker price; at closing she assigns the claim to the builder and pays exactly the advertised price. Her friend Marc buys an identical unit as a rental investment: he does not qualify for the New Housing Rebate, pays the rebate amount on top at closing, and later files for the NRRPR himself once a tenant signs a lease.
Reviewed by Alexandre Bernier, CFP®, CIM®, PFP®·Updated July 2026