GST, Deposits & Incentives on New Builds in Alberta

GST is federal and it sits at 5%. Alberta has no provincial sales tax, so on a new-build purchase here GST is the only sales tax in the deal — there's no second provincial line to account for the way there is in some other provinces.

It applies because the home is new. A newly built or substantially renovated home sold by a builder is a taxable sale; a resale home sold by someone who isn't a builder is exempt, which is why GST simply never comes up on most MLS purchases. "Substantially renovated" has a technical meaning — roughly, at least 90% of the interior of the building removed or replaced — so a flipped house that was gutted to the studs can be a taxable sale even though it isn't new construction.

The practical question is how your builder is quoting the price. Some advertised prices are GST-included and already net of the rebate the builder expects you to qualify for; some are not. In Alberta the common arrangement is that the buyer assigns the New Housing Rebate to the builder in the purchase agreement, and the builder credits the equivalent amount against the price at closing rather than you receiving a cheque afterward. That's not a worse deal, but it changes what happens if it later turns out you didn't qualify. Ask two questions before you sign: is this price GST-included, and does it assume a rebate I've actually been confirmed for?

There are two. The older one is the federal GST New Housing Rebate, and it still exists: 36% of the GST paid, to a maximum of $6,300, with the full amount available at a purchase price of $350,000 or less, phasing down on a straight line to nil at $450,000 — the formula is $6,300 × ($450,000 − price) ÷ $100,000. You have to be buying the home as a primary residence, and the claim is generally filed within two years. Those thresholds haven't moved with prices, so at most Calgary new-build price points this rebate pays little or nothing. (Verified 2026-07-29.)

The newer one is the First-Time Home Buyers' GST Rebate, and as of 2026-07-29 it is law, not a proposal. It arrived in Bill C-4, the Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act, which received Royal Assent on March 12, 2026 according to the parliamentary record. It rebates up to $50,000 — full relief on a new home priced up to $1,000,000, reduced on a straight line between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000, and nothing at or above $1,500,000. The purchase agreement has to have been entered into on or after March 20, 2025 and before 2031, and construction has to be substantially completed before 2036. If you are building rather than buying from a builder, the owner-built version of the rebate runs on its own window — construction or substantial renovation beginning on or after March 20, 2025 and before 2031, and substantially completed before 2036.

"First-time" is defined by a look-back, not by paperwork you've never filed: neither you nor your spouse or common-law partner can have lived in a home the two of you owned, anywhere in the world, as a primary residence during the calendar year of the purchase or the previous four calendar years. It's a once-in-a-lifetime rebate, and a claim already made by a spouse or common-law partner uses it up for both of you. It can be credited by the builder when the home transfers, or claimed by you directly from the CRA afterward, generally within two years of possession.

What you can claim, and what you actually end up with, depends on the price, the dates and your own history — so work it out for your specific purchase rather than from a general description of either one. This is also the part of the file most likely to move, so treat any figure you read online, including this page, as dated: the CRA's own "First-time home buyers' GST/HST rebate" pages are the authority, and they're the thing to check the week you're signing.

Your deposit on a new build is a contract term, not a regulated number. There is no province-wide minimum or maximum deposit in Alberta — each builder sets the amount and the schedule in its own purchase agreement, which is why two builders on the same street can ask for very different things. It's usually staged rather than paid all at once: an amount at signing, then further instalments tied to milestones like the start of construction or your selections being finalized.

On our own builder files we most often see the deposit come due once the deal goes firm — after financing is approved — at around 5%, with nothing further required after that. The next most common shape is 5% at that point and another 5% a few months out, and on homes above $1M we have seen it split into four instalments of 5% spread across the build. Those are the shapes that have crossed our desk, not a standard and not a range to expect: every one of them was a term in a particular builder's agreement, and yours will be whatever your agreement says it is.

Protection varies with what you're buying. Alberta's New Home Buyer Protection Act mandates warranty coverage on new homes, but it does not include mandatory deposit protection — a point Alberta's new-home warranty association has made publicly. New condominiums are the exception: since April 1, 2018 the Condominium Property Act requires purchaser deposits to be held in trust by a prescribed trustee, meaning an active Alberta lawyer or law firm. The developer has to place your funds in that trust account within three business days, and the lawyer has to tell you they've arrived within 10 days. On a single-family build, whether your deposit is held in trust or insured is a question you have to ask, because the answer is in the contract rather than in the statute.

The deposit is also not your down payment, and conflating the two is the most common confusion we see. The down payment is the equity portion of the purchase your lender requires, set by federal mortgage rules. The deposit is money you commit under the builder's contract, at risk if you fail to close. In the normal course it's held by the builder's trust for you until closing, where it makes part of the purchase price — so it forms part of what you end up putting down rather than being money on top of it. A large builder deposit doesn't reduce the down payment you'll need to qualify, and a small one doesn't mean you can bring less to the table.

Incentives on new builds tend to come in a few recognizable shapes: included upgrades or a design-centre allowance, a credit toward closing costs, a rate buydown arranged through the builder's lender, or a price reduction on a home already built and sitting in inventory. None of these are inherently good or bad. They're pricing decisions, and the useful skill is reading what a given one is actually worth to you.

A few questions do most of the work. Is this a reduction in the price, or a credit that can only be spent inside the builder's design centre at the builder's pricing? If it's a rate buydown, does it last the full term or only the first year or two, and what does the payment look like when it ends? Does taking the incentive require using a specific lender, and does that lender's rate stand up against what you'd get on your own? And is the base price itself in line with what comparable homes trade for, or is the incentive being funded by a price that started high?

We're deliberately not listing current promotions here — they change monthly and by community, so anything printed on a page like this is out of date before you read it. If you want to know what's actually being offered on a specific builder or phase right now, that's a conversation, not a page.