Land transfer fees, mortgages to increase in Alberta on Oct. 20

Buying a home in Alberta will cost a little more starting on October 20. The fees to transfer land or register a mortgage will increase.

Previously, it was a land transfer fee of $2 per $5,000 of the purchase price, and a mortgage registration fee of one dollar and fifty cents per $5,000 of the mortgage amount. As of October 20th, both of those fees increase to $5 per $5,000.

“It’s not good. It’s still low enough that it probably won’t affect housing sales. It’s still way less than 1 per cent of the actual housing price,” said Brad Mitchell, the CEO of the Alberta Real Estate Association.

The increase was proposed in the spring budget and made official in September of this year. While the increase is substantial, the fees are still significantly less than in many other provinces in Canada.

“I think they’ve made a promise to keep it the lowest in canada, but it’s really a tax that shouldn’t be there. If you think about it, for the privilege of selling a piece of property that you own, you get to pay the government a tax. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Mitchell says that he hasn’t seen a rush to finalize home purchases before the October 20th change, but warns Albertans should be concerned at what a tax jump like this could bring.

“The danger is is once you have the tax, it never goes away. From a policy perspective, this isn’t something the government does a lot of work for. It’s not like there’s services attached to it, other than the privilege of transferring title. Which you pay for when you register a title already. So the fact that it’s not a capped tax is concerning.”