Canada's best places for renters and the Home of the Week: Canadian real estate news for the week of Nov. 7

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This week: Mark Carney released his first budget as Prime Minister, which included a change to the Underused Housing Tax, The Globe published its first ranking of the best places in Canada to rent, plus one property worth a look.

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Federal budget

How the federal budget affects housing in Canada

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Mr. Carney’s Liberals unveiled their federal budget Tuesday, billing it as a “generational” shift aimed at forcing a fundamental retooling of the Canadian economy. Included in the budget is the elimination of the controversial Underused Housing Tax as of the 2025 calendar year.

As Erica Alini writes, the tax, introduced by the Trudeau government, imposes a 1-per-cent annual tax on the value of foreign-owned residential property deemed vacant or underused. The measure was meant to deter foreign real estate investors from leaving Canadian homes empty but ended up becoming a headache for swaths of Canadian homeowners who had to file a special tax return just to prove they should be exempt from the tax. While the Carney government is proposing to end the tax, taxpayers are still required to comply with the UHT for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024.

On Nov. 5, deputy Ottawa bureau chief Bill Curry, economics reporter Mark Rendell and reporter Jason Kirby answered reader questions on what the budget means for Canadians. Here’s an excerpt from the Q&A.

How does the new budget specifically address the ongoing issue of housing affordability, particularly for middle-income families and first-time homebuyers who continue to be priced out of the market?

Rendell: The government’s biggest housing initiative, Build Canada Homes, was announced in September, and there’s not a lot new on housing in the budget. Build Canada Homes is a new federal agency which has been tasked with building affordable housing across the country. It was initially allotted $13-billion in funding, with the goal of using that money to bring in additional capital from the provinces, municipalities and the private sector.

The agency is focusing on factory-built homes, with the goal of spurring that part of the construction industry, and is initially targeting 4,000 homes in six cities: Dartmouth, N.S.; Longueuil, Que.; Ottawa; Toronto; Winnipeg and Edmonton. When it comes to market housing, there’s not a whole lot new in the budget. The government is allowing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to increase its annual issuance of Canada Mortgage Bonds from $60-billion to $80-billion. These financial instruments help mortgage lenders to lower their cost of capital, which is then passed along to customers in the form of lower mortgage rates.

Renter’s world

Why Edmonton is Canada’s most renter-friendly city

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As buying a home becomes less and less attainable, renting is no longer a temporary arrangement for many people. For some, rental accommodation is a step before home ownership. For others, it’s about choosing a lasting home in a community. So to keep up with the changing rental landscape, The Globe built a tool to help Canadians find the best cities to rent. Using monthly listing data from Rentals.ca, data editor Mahima Singh ranked 235 cities (each with a population exceeding 20,000) on four attributes: affordability, availability, stability and livability. And according to the results, Edmonton is Canada’s most renter-friendly city. The Alberta capital’s median income is high, while its average rents were relatively low, making it one of the most affordable cities in Canada. Salmaan Farooqui explains why Edmonton ranked so high.

This week’s lowest fixed and variable mortgage rates in Canada

Rates shown are the lowest available for each term/type and category (insured versus uninsured) as of market close on Thursday, Nov. 6.

Fee fiasco

Calgary builders say high fees in redevelopment areas hinder work, jeopardize affordability

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Calgary boasts some of the lowest municipal development charges for new residential development in Canada, but not all new construction is made equal across the city. A recent analysis produced by the Calgary Inner City Builders Association suggests that development fees related to infrastructure upgrades can add, on average, $77,700 to the cost of an individual townhouse built in a redeveloping neighbourhood. By contrast, fees for single and semi-detached homes in established areas amount to less than $40,000 per dwelling.

As Ximena Gonzalez writes, developers say the fees can act against the economies of scale that increased density is touted to support. Because builders typically transfer the cost of these fees to a dwelling’s end user, when the total cost of a project exceeds what the market can bear, affordability isn’t only eroded, but construction can be halted.

Home of the Week

Air quality was the top job for this country home rebuild

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46447 Old Mail Rd, Meaford, Grey County, Ont. – Full gallery here

Since the owners took possession of this four-bedroom home in the town of Meaford, Ont., which sits on the southern shore of Georgian Bay, ensuring the old home was pumping irritant-free air was a top priority. The heating and cooling is geothermal, and they installed a powerful dehumidifier and an energy recovery ventilator air exchanger that is constantly refreshing the inside air from outside. According to the owners, the house has its own lungs.

The layout is similarly well thought-out. The central living area opens up with the dining room on the right and the living room on the left. The kitchen is just behind, over a half-wall that opens that room up to the large windows and doors. In the corner is a granite mantle and wood-burning fireplace that is tied into the heating for the house. The lot has five acres of cleared land surrounded by a woodlot, but with commanding views of the landscape, which makes for a bounty of fresh air, inside and out.