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Hi, It's John Manneh, working together with Laura Spracklin at Royal LePage Johnston & Daniel.
And today we're talking about the top 5 costs you need to know about before buying a condo.
The first cost you need to budget for when purchasing a condo is your deposit. It's typically
four to five percent of the purchase price. You pay that within 24 hours of buying your
condo on paper. That deposit is held in trust by the listing agent's brokerage and is then
paid to the seller on closing.
The land transfer tax is the largest cost when purchasing a condo. And you need to budget
for this and it is paid on closing. For example, for a $350,000 purchase, the tax is about
$7000. For a $400,00 purchase, the tax is about $8000. For a $600,000 purchase, the
tax is about $16,000, and for an 800,000 purchase, the tax is about $24,000. Now, if you are
a first time buyer, you do save a substantial amount of these land transfer taxes. And a
land transfer tax is made up of the City Of Toronto tax, and the Province Of Ontario tax.
When buying a resale condo, there is no GST or HST attached to the purchase price. When
buying new construction, the HST is already built into the purchase price in most cases.
Lawyer costs are also something you need to budget for. When purchasing a condo, the costs
including taxes are about $1300. You can get a very inexpensive lawyer for under $1000
or a very expensive lawyer for $2000. But a good, experienced real estate lawyer should
be about $1300 including taxes.
Another cost to consider is the cost to move. It costs about $200 per hour to rent a moving
truck with 2-3 guys that are helping you. So depending on how much furniture that you
have and how many hours you need, you could probably move into a condo for under $1000.
Another cost that we highly recommend you consider is doing an inspection on any condo
you purchase. So for resale, just like if you're buying a house, we are recommending
our clients complete a home inspection for resale condos. There are many things that
do come up such as electrical issues within a unit or water issues between units, H-Vac
units that aren't working properly, plus much more. It's definitely worth the $300 you would
spend to do an inspection before you buy your condo just to make sure you know your condo
is in great shape.
As for Real Estate fees when hiring a Real Estate professional to help you with your
condo search, there typically are no real estate fees when purchasing a condo, and the
seller in post cases does compensate both the selling agent and buying agent. However,
there are certain circumstances when a buyer would compensate their buyer agent directly.
So these are the main costs you need to consider when buying a condo. For more information
or to contact us to ask anymore questions, please visit www.calljohnandlaura.com