The 2026 GST rebate on new builds – who it does (and doesn't) help

In March 2026 the federal first-time home buyers' GST rebate became law. The pitch is easy to say. Buy a new-build home as a first-time buyer and the 5% GST comes off entirely on homes up to $1 million, which is worth as much as $50,000, with partial relief up to $1.5 million.

That pitch is also where most people stop reading, and the details are what decide who actually collects.

What the rebate is

• 100% of the GST back on a new home priced up to $1 million, to a maximum of $50,000.
• A steady phase-outbetween $1 million and $1.5 million. A $1.25 million home gets about half of it, roughly $25,000. By $1.5 million it's gone.
• The federal part only.In Ontario, HST is 13%, made up of the 5% federal and 8% provincial pieces. This rebate only touches the 5%. Ontario's own new housing rebate on the 8% side already exists and keeps running under its own rules.

Who qualifies for the GST rebate?

It covers new homes, whether you buy from a builder, build on land you own, or buy shares in a co-op, as long as the purchase agreement was signed on or after March 20, 2025 and before 2031, with construction substantially finished before 2036. The home has to become your principal residence, and you have to be the first person to live in it.

"First-time buyer" here means the four-year look-back. You (and your spouse or common-law partner) haven't lived in a home you owned during the current calendar year or the four before it. That's the same test the FHSA and the Home Buyers' Plan use, not the never-owned-anywhere-ever test behind the land transfer tax rebates.

The parts that trip people up

• Resale homes get nothing.It's not that they're shut out of this rebate. It's that resale homes don't carry GST to begin with. So if you're weighing a new build against a similar resale, the fair comparison is after tax and after rebate, and that gap is smaller now than the sticker prices make it look.
• The agreement date is a hard line.Signed with the builder before March 20, 2025? That original agreement doesn't qualify, and the rules are written specifically to stop people from re-papering an old deal to sneak under the date.
• Assignments are messy.Buying someone else's pre-construction contract leaves your eligibility hanging on the dates and how the deal is put together. The person assigning it to you has their own tax problem, since the anti-flipping rule can treat their profit as ordinary income, and that feeds into how these deals get priced. Get specific advice before you assume the rebate comes along with the assignment.
• One per lifetime, more or less.You can't claim it if your spouse already has, and you only get it once yourself. The older GST/HST new housing rebate is smaller but still around, and it's the fallback when this one doesn't apply. You don't get to stack both on the same tax.

How you actually receive it

Most builders will credit the rebate right at closing. You assign the claim to them, the purchase price gets adjusted, and nothing comes out of your pocket while you wait. If a builder won't do that, you pay the GST at closing and file with the CRA for the refund yourself. Either way, the eligibility declarations are in your name, so read what you sign. The CRA has been clear that rebates claimed in error get clawed back with interest.

What it means at a pre-construction sales office

On a $950,000 new build, this rebate is worth about $47,500. That's real money, and the sales office knows it. But a rebate on the tax doesn't tell you whether the underlying price is any good. Pre-construction pricing needs the same hard look at comparable sales as any other purchase. A new build also lets a first-time buyer stretch to a 30-year amortization on an insured mortgage, which is a separate way to bring the monthly payment down and worth pricing out alongside the rebate. And budget as though the rebate might not reach you until your eligibility is actually confirmed. It's a rotten surprise to find out a title decision cost you $47,500 after the agreement is already firm.

Weighing a new build against a resale right now? Bring me the two listingsand we'll run both down to a true cash-at-closing number, tax, rebates, and everything else.