New Home HST Rebates in Ontario
New Builds · Substantial Renovations · Owner-Built Homes
The Tax on a New Home
Was Never Meant to Stay.
A newly built home in Ontario carries 13% HST. A resale home carries none. That single difference is why new-home buyers are handed a rebate system nobody explains to them, and why so much of it goes unclaimed or gets quietly absorbed into a builder's price.
There are now four separate rebates in play, and as of 2026 they stack far higher than they used to. On the right purchase, in the right window, the total relief reaches $130,000. On a resale bungalow it is nothing at all, because there was no HST to begin with.
This guide sets out which is which. It is general information — when we prepare your return or review a purchase, we work it against your own agreement and closing documents.
First, the Boundary
Every rebate on this page applies to newly built or substantially renovated housing. Buying a used home from its previous owner is an exempt sale — no HST is charged, so there is nothing to rebate. If you bought a resale house in London last spring, this page is not about your purchase, and no adviser can produce a cheque from it.
"Substantially renovated" is a real threshold and a demanding one: 90% or more of the interior of the existing house has to be removed or replaced. Only livable space counts toward the test — garages and crawl spaces are excluded. A gut renovation of the whole house can qualify. A new kitchen, new bathrooms and new floors, on a house that otherwise stayed intact, does not.
The other hard boundary is who can claim. The new housing rebate is not available to a corporation or a partnership. It is an individual's rebate, and it turns on the home being the primary place of residence of the buyer or a relation. A purchase made to rent out has a different rebate with its own rules — see our Rental Property Tax Guide for how rental property is treated.
The Two Baseline Rebates
These have existed for years and apply to any qualifying purchase, first-time buyer or not.
The federal rebate returns 36% of the 5% GST, to a maximum of $6,300. It is paid in full where the home's fair market value is $350,000 or less, shrinks across the range above that, and reaches nil at $450,000. Those thresholds have not moved in a very long time, and the practical effect in London is that the federal baseline rebate is usually zero — there is not much new construction here under $450,000.
The Ontario rebate is the one that almost always applies. It returns 75% of the 8% provincial part of the HST, to a maximum of $24,000. That maximum is reached at a $400,000 price and then simply stays there — unlike the federal rebate, it does not phase out, so a $900,000 new build still gets the full $24,000.
For an owner-built home there is a second figure worth knowing: the Ontario maximum is $24,000 where HST was paid on the land, and $16,080 where it was not. Which one applies depends on how you acquired the lot, and it is the kind of detail settled by the closing documents rather than by memory.
The First-Time Buyers' GST Rebate
This is the federal measure that changed the arithmetic. A qualifying first-time buyer recovers up to 100% of the 5% federal GST, to a maximum of $50,000 — against a baseline rebate that caps at $6,300.
It is paid in full on a home priced at $1 million or less. Between $1 million and $1.5 million it is reduced on a sliding scale — the CRA's own example is a $1.25 million home, exactly halfway, giving half the maximum, or $25,000. At $1.5 million or more there is no rebate.
The timing conditions are strict and they are the first thing to check. For a home bought from a builder, the agreement of purchase and sale must have been entered into on or after March 20, 2025 and before 2031. For an owner-built home, construction must begin in that same window. In both cases the work must be substantially completed before 2036.
"First-time buyer" is defined more broadly than most people expect, and it reaches your spouse. You do not qualify if you — or your spouse or common-law partner — lived in a home that either of you owned as a primary place of residence at any time in the current calendar year or the previous four. It is a four-year look-back rather than a never-owned test, so a previous owner who has been renting for five years can qualify again.
Two more conditions catch people. It is one rebate per couple — neither of you can have received it before. And you must be the first individual to occupy the home after it is completed, which is what rules out buying a finished new build somebody else already lived in, and what makes assignment purchases a question to ask about rather than assume.
Ontario's Enhanced Rebate — the 2026-27 Window
This is the newest piece, the most valuable, and the one with a closing door on it. Ontario's Enhanced New Housing Rebate lifts the provincial rebate from $24,000 to as much as $80,000 — the full 8% provincial part of the HST on a home up to $1 million.
Critically, and unlike the federal measure above, it is not restricted to first-time buyers. It applies to an individual buying a new or substantially renovated home from a builder for use as the primary place of residence of themselves or a relation. A move-up buyer on their third house qualifies on the same terms as somebody buying their first.
The window is narrow. The agreement of purchase and sale must be entered into with the builder on or after April 1, 2026 and on or before March 31, 2027. Construction must begin on or before December 31, 2028 and be substantially completed on or before December 31, 2031. For an owner-built home, construction itself has to start inside the April 2026 to March 2027 window and be substantially completed by December 31, 2029. Tax on the purchase has to become payable no later than December 31, 2032.
Above $1 million the enhanced rebate holds at its ceiling rather than phasing out immediately: the $80,000 maximum is maintained through to $1.5 million, then declines in a straight line to $24,000 across the range from $1.5 million to $1.85 million. Above $1.85 million you are back to the ordinary $24,000 Ontario rebate. There is an overall cap worth knowing — the total of all rebates for the 8% provincial part cannot exceed the lesser of $80,000 and the provincial HST actually payable.
Land-lease homes sit on a lower scale, with a maximum of $26,400.
ONHAP — Where the Other $50,000 Comes From
The enhanced provincial rebate has a federal-side companion that Ontario pays itself: the Ontario New Home Affordability Payment. It is worth up to $50,000, the equivalent of up to 100% of the 5% federal part of the HST, and it goes to buyers who qualify for the enhanced provincial rebate.
$80,000 provincial plus $50,000 federal-equivalent is where the $130,000 headline figure comes from. It is the full 13% HST on a $1 million home, returned.
There is no double-dipping, and the mechanism is worth understanding. ONHAP is reduced by the federal part of any GST/HST new housing rebate or first-time home buyers' rebate you receive. A first-time buyer inside the enhanced window does not collect $50,000 federally and $50,000 from Ontario — the federal rebate comes first and ONHAP fills whatever gap is left. The practical consequence is that a first-time buyer and a move-up buyer can land in much the same place, which is unusual, and is the point of the design.
There is no separate ONHAP application. You consent on the GST190 or GST191 to the CRA sharing your information with the Province, or you provide the information to Ontario directly. It is administered and paid by Ontario rather than the CRA, so it does not arrive with your CRA rebate and should not be chased there.
How You Actually Get the Money
There are two routes, and which one you are on is decided in the agreement of purchase and sale, usually before anyone has thought about it.
Most commonly the builder pays or credits the rebate to you on closing — the price you negotiated is quietly net of it, and you assign the rebate to the builder in return. Nothing arrives afterwards because you already had it. This is the standard arrangement in new construction, and it is why so many buyers believe they never received a rebate at all.
Otherwise you claim it yourself. For a home bought from a builder that means Form GST190 with the Ontario schedule RC7190-ON. For an owner-built home it is Form GST191 with the worksheet GST191-WS and the Ontario schedule RC7191-ON.
The deadline is two years, and it is absolute. For a purchase from a builder it runs from the closing date. For an owner-built home it runs from the earliest of first occupancy, substantial completion, or an exempt sale before occupancy. There is no late-filing relief worth relying on here, and a $24,000 rebate is a painful thing to lose to a calendar.
Keep the invoices. The CRA can ask for the documents behind the claim for six years, and on an owner-built claim the receipts are the claim — the rebate is built from them line by line.
Before You Sign
Four Things That
Cost People the Rebate
The date on the agreement, not the closing
Every window on this page is measured from when the agreement of purchase and sale was signed — March 20, 2025 for the federal first-time rebate, April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027 for Ontario's enhanced one. A closing in 2027 on a 2025 agreement is governed by 2025. Check the signature date before anything else.
Who else is on title
Adding a parent or a co-signer to satisfy a lender does not by itself cost you the rebate: at least one purchaser has to be a first-time buyer who occupies the home first, not all of them. What does cost you the rebate is a corporation or a partnership on title, which disqualifies the claim outright. It is a cheap question to ask before closing and an expensive one afterwards.
Intent, and what you did with the keys
The rebate turns on the home being a primary place of residence for you or a relation. Listing it for rent or resale on closing is the pattern the CRA looks for, and it assesses these years later with interest. If your plans changed honestly, say so early — a rental purchase has its own rebate rather than none.
Assuming the builder handled it
Sometimes they did, and the price already reflects it. Sometimes the paperwork was never filed and the two-year clock is running against you. Your statement of adjustments says which, in one line, and it is worth reading before the window closes rather than after.