The Truth About HST

HST myth hurting Ontario real-estate resale market, OREA survey:

OBJ Staff
Ottawa Business Journal

More than half of Ontario residents think the Harmonized Sales Tax applies to the full purchase price of resold houses, a perception that is artificially slowing the real-estate market, according to an Ipsos-Reid survey commissioned by the
Ontario Real Estate Association.

The HST only applies to transaction fees in the case of resale homes, OREA said in a statement released Wednesday. “Currently, the average price of an Ontario resale home is around $330,000. Therefore, this confusion leaves the majority of Ontarians wrongly believing that the HST will add more than $40,000 to the transaction cost,” the association stated.”There is growing concern among real estate professionals that this misperception about the HST is dampening the Ontario housing market.”However, in the release OREA did not provide   statistics comparing the resale market before and after HST was introduced in July. The survey was conducted on the web with 830 Ontarians that were already a part of Ipsos’ online panel. Completed between Oct. 4 and 11, the survey is estimated to be accurate within 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The association represents 49,000 brokers and salespeople who are members of 42 real-estate boards in Ontario.