My spouse and I are from Nova Scotia and just purchased our first home in the Halifax area this fall. If it wasn't for the deed transfer tax, I'm fairly certain we would still be stuck in our 1 bedroom apt that we lived in since we met as undergraduate university students. We looked at buying a few years after graduation in 2018 and decided instead to pursue masters degrees first and then buy our first home. Unfortunately, the price action between 2018 and 2021 in the housing meant that despite higher incomes and increased savings (as we continued to work while obtaining our masters degrees) the places we considered in 2018 had generally doubled in price. Even with our savings in 2025, I doubt we could have competed against those from outside the province to buy our first home. Maybe we are a meaningless anecdote but it worked for us. For those of us that don't have parents to pay our down payment, programs like this make a difference.

I will say let’s look at 2267 Brunswick Street listed for $6.3 million but assessed at $2.4 million by PVSC. All the NRDTT is is a tax grab. I’ll bet a tiny one at that. Now imagine if PVSC actually did their job? With AI also and all sales automatically registered the calculation for tax because automatic. PVSC could have a team who actually appraised let’s say houses over $1 million to get appraisal right so they can collect their tax grab. Heck they could pay $500 like the rest of us and more than offset the tax by getting the appraisal right. And then compare apartment buildings with one owner like a REIT may own whose property taxes are half that of individually owned condo units. No province should have a NRDTT and isn’t the foreign buyer ban enough? That’s politics for you.