Western Standard - Canadian Housing Crisis ｜ Shocking $145K in Taxes & Fees!

00:00:00.000 Now in Ontario, in Toronto and Vancouver, the DCCs alone, so there's a whole raft of

00:00:07.520 taxes and charges and city charges, there's off-sites, there's this, there's that,

00:00:12.880 but just one alone is $145,000 per residential unit in a multi-family complex.

00:00:22.720 So are you saying that when I buy a home and it's multi-family complex, so what would be

00:00:30.000 the typical price of the home in one of those call it a million dollars yeah you're saying

00:00:35.040 150 000 of that is just taxes and fees so the government's taking 15 right off the top

00:00:44.080 but i as consumer i'm not aware of that so it's a charge to the developer and it's from the city

00:00:49.360 uh and they they justified it by saying that the development pays for development

00:00:54.240 so that's how they rationalize it but the truth is is it just goes into general coffers in the city

00:00:58.880 and then i when i buy a home that's a new home pay gst yep on the whole thing on the whole thing so

00:01:06.800 so they're making money at hst in ontario and bc so they're making money two ways well that's

00:01:14.240 there's a whole bunch more there's also you know in british columbia there's also excess taxes on

00:01:19.360 concrete there's uh like i said off-site charges there's parks contribution the list goes on and

00:01:26.160 on and on and so what i'm identifying is on a million dollar home they added the charges of

00:01:32.400 145 000 up front and so the way that developers look at it is they look at all their costs costs

00:01:40.960 you know the hard costs of the guys working in the in the field and hammering the nails and

00:01:45.520 building the place all those costs and then all the city costs and the land costs and what they

00:01:51.360 do is they mark it up by 20 percent and say can i sell that in the market and so what they did was

00:01:57.040 they took the the 145 000 they pay it up front so you and they carry it for two years during

00:02:03.760 the two-year construction process so that adds a bunch of money that adds another twenty thousand

00:02:08.960 dollars uh and then they add their 20 then they have to pay gst on it and and possibly hst so

00:02:17.120 So that adds another $20,000.

00:02:20.280 And then they add their required profit

00:02:23.400 in order for them to get involved.

00:02:25.000 That's another $30,000.

00:02:29.360 So that $145,000 turns into a cost of housing

00:02:34.660 of about $250,000, a quarter of a million dollar unit.

00:02:39.280 So 25% of a new house is taxes and fees.

00:02:43.580 So I can see how that's, you know, led to a housing crisis and sort of like inflation of cost of living at a very basic way for people.

Western Standard - September 14, 2026