What it costs to sell a house in Durham Region

Real estate remuneration in Ontario is not fixed by any law, rule or association, and the amount, the structure and what it buys are agreed between you and the brokerage in the seller representation agreement before the listing goes live. It may be a percentage of the sale price, a flat amount or a combination, and the agreement also states what portion is offered to a cooperating brokerage that brings the buyer, because the buyer's representative is usually paid out of the same pool. TRESA requires that all of this be in writing and explained to you, and the RECO Information Guide you receive first covers what the agreement can and cannot contain. Nothing is paid up front. On closing day your lawyer deducts the remuneration and its tax from the sale proceeds and remits it to Urban Avenue Realty, which in turn pays the cooperating brokerage. If the sale does not close, the agreement governs what, if anything, is owed, so read that clause before you sign rather than after.

HST does not touch the price of a resale home. A buyer pays the agreed figure for your house, semi, townhouse or condo unit with nothing added on top. The services around the sale are a different matter. Ontario's harmonized rate of 13 percent applies to real estate remuneration, to your lawyer's fee, to staging, photography, cleaning and moving, and to the inspections and tests you order, and on a Durham closing the tax on the remuneration is the largest single line after the remuneration itself. Two situations change the picture. If the property has never been lived in, for example an assignment of a pre-construction townhouse in Seaton or a builder's inventory unit in north Oshawa, the transaction can attract HST and the rebates that go with it, and it needs an accountant's eye before it is listed. Farms and properties with a business use can also carry tax on part of the price. For an ordinary resale, plan for the tax on the services and nothing more.

Your lawyer charges a fee for the sale plus disbursements, which are the out-of-pocket costs of doing it: the title search, the electronic registration of the mortgage discharge, courier and software charges, and the cost of any document that has to be obtained or corrected. Title problems are where the budget stretches. An old notice of security interest for rented equipment, which the Homeowner Protection Act deemed expired as of June 6, 2024, may still need an application to amend the register before the buyer's lawyer will accept the title. An unregistered survivorship after a spouse's death, an executor's certificate that was never registered, a paid-off mortgage that was never deleted or a lot addition that never made it onto the deed each add work and fees. A survey is not required in Ontario, but a buyer may ask for one, and a seller who has an old survey should hand it over rather than let the buyer price a new one into the offer.

Paying off a mortgage because you sold is a prepayment, and a closed mortgage charges for it. On a variable-rate closed mortgage the penalty is generally three months' interest. On a fixed-rate closed mortgage it is generally the greater of three months' interest and the interest rate differential, which compares your contract rate with what the lender could charge today for the remaining term, and that second figure can be large when rates have fallen since you signed. Open mortgages carry no penalty. The lender also charges a discharge or administration fee for releasing its charge on title. Two ways to soften this: port the mortgage to the home you are buying, which most lenders allow within a set window and which generally sidesteps the penalty, or time the closing near the renewal date. Ask your lender for a written payout statement early; the figure is not final until closing, but it tells you what the sale will actually net, and it is the number the lawyer needs on the statement of adjustments.

The costs you control are the ones spent before the photographs. Paint, lighting, a deep clean, a junk pickup and a few repairs are modest and usually return more than they cost; a full renovation before selling seldom does. Staging ranges from a consultation to a furnished house, and the team advises which end fits the buyer you are aiming at. Moving within Durham is a day's job; moving to Port Perry from Ajax with a garage full of thirty years costs more than the distance suggests. Then the regional extras. A rural sale usually pays for a bacteriological water test, which the public health laboratory processes from a sample bottle, a septic inspection or pump-out with a receipt, and sometimes a well flow test. A waterfront sale may pay for a conservation authority property inquiry to confirm what the shoreline permits allow. A condominium sale pays for a status certificate if you order it ahead of the buyer, at no more than one hundred dollars including tax. A two-unit house in Oshawa that is not yet registered pays whatever it takes to get there, or discounts instead.

Land transfer tax in Ontario falls on the buyer at registration, never on the seller, so a Durham seller owes none of it, and none of the eight Durham municipalities adds a local charge of its own. Toronto is the only city in the province that collects a second, municipal version. The provincial tax is calculated in brackets on the consideration paid: one half of one percent on the first fifty-five thousand dollars, one percent up to two hundred and fifty thousand, one and a half percent up to four hundred thousand, two percent up to two million, and two and a half percent above that for a property with one or two single-family residences. A buyer who has never owned a home anywhere, is at least eighteen, is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and moves in within nine months can claim a refund of up to four thousand dollars, applied for within eighteen months of registration; it matters to you because first-time buyers in Oshawa, Courtice and Bowmanville budget around it. You meet the tax again only when you buy your next home.

Before you list, ask the Miller team for a net-proceeds worksheet built on your mortgage statement and your property; the numbers are better known in March than discovered in the lawyer's office in June.