What are the costs involved when buying a condo?
As first-time home buyers, it is sometimes hard to budget all the costs involved to buy your first condo, here are the typical costs involved to buy your condo.
Fixed costs
All the costs below will be needed before the transaction.
Downpayment : minimum of 5% for Canadian residents and 35% for non-residents. If you buy a pre-construction condo, it will depend of the deposit structure of the developer you are dealing with (average 15-20%)
Lawyer or notary costs : $1000 – $1500 + taxes, this is a one time fee to close the transaction
Welcome Taxes (or Property Transfer Duties) : this will happen only the first year you own a condo. You can use an average of 1% but the exact formula is 0.5% on the first 50 000$ and 1% of the property value between 50 000$ and 250 0000$, and 1.5% of the value above 250 000$
Title insurance (optional) : this will be offered from the notary to certify you are buying a condo from the right owner.
Moving, furniture or appliance costs : this will depend on your situation and own lifestyle, if you rent your condo unfurnished then no costs will be involved. Condo often come with kitchen appliance but not washer-dryer.
Recurrent costs
Those are cost you will have for the length you own the property.
- Mortgage : this is the cost of the financing
- Condo fees : usually a cost per square feet, for example it could be 30 cents per square feet for 700 sq. f. condo will give you $210/month
- Municipal taxes and school taxes : take an average of 0.9% but you can find the exact formula with the City of Montreal here.
- Condo insurance : between $30 to $50 per month
Example
For a $300,000 condo purchase, you will need a total of $35,550 before you buy the property if you put 10% as downpayment.
- Downpayment : $30,000 if 10%, $60,000 if 20% or $105,000 if 35%
- Notary cost : 1,000$
- Title insurance : $50
- Washer-dryer : $1,500
- Welcome taxes : $3,000 (average 1%)
Once you own the condo, for the same $300,000 condo value of 425 sq.f and $0.36/sq.f. for maintenance it will cost you only $1,593.30 every month
- Mortgage : $1,202.80
- Condo fees : $153
- Municipal taxes : $212.50
- Monthly insurance : $25
We hope this will help facilitate your buying process and you can still contact us to know the projects you can benefit.
