Quinte Real Estate Agents aren’t too pleased with the budget. The Ontario Real Estate Association warns that the plan to harmonize the sales tax will add more than $2,000 to the cost of buying a resale home in the province and could stall the sluggish housing market’s recovery from recession. The tax plan would raise the costs of legal fees, moving costs, real estate commissions and home inspection fees linked to real estate deals. Currently, consumers pay only the five per cent GST on those services. The industry group says that for a resale house priced at $360,000, a harmonized tax could add more than $2,000 in new taxes to closing costs.
