First Time Home Buyers' PTT Exemption
Also known as: FTHB exemption · FTHB · First Time Home Buyer exemption
A BC Property Transfer Tax exemption for qualifying first-time home buyers — available for homes up to $835,000 fair market value: full exemption (no PTT) to $500,000, $8,000 off from $500,000 to $835,000, linear phase-out $835,000–$860,000.
The First Time Home Buyers' (FTHB) exemption was raised April 1, 2024: it is available for fair market values at or under $835,000, with the exemption equal to the PTT on the first $500,000 of FMV. A home at or under $500,000 pays no general PTT; a home from $500,000 to $835,000 gets $8,000 off. Above $835,000 the exemption phases out linearly, reaching $0 at $860,000 — buyers at or above $860,000 receive no exemption.
To qualify, the buyer must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, must occupy the home as their principal residence within 92 days of registration and remain for at least 1 year, and must never have held a registered interest in a principal residence anywhere in the world. The property has two conditions of its own that most summaries leave out: it must be 0.5 hectares (1.24 acres) or smaller, and it must carry only residential improvements. Foreign nationals are not eligible. The exemption is mutually exclusive with the Newly Built Home Exemption.
Work it out with your own numbers
BC Property Transfer Tax calculatorRelated terms
- Property Transfer Tax — A provincial tax payable to the Province of British Columbia on the registered fair market value of any residential property title transfer, calculated using marginal-rate brackets.
- Newly Built Home PTT Exemption — A BC Property Transfer Tax exemption for a newly built home worth $1,100,000 or less, phasing out in a straight line to $1,150,000.
- GST New Housing Rebate (BC) — A federal rebate on the 5% goods and services tax charged on a new home, and since 2026 there are two of them.
- Closing Day (Completion) — Closing day, or completion, is when the buyer's lawyer registers the title transfer at the BC Land Title Office and the money reaches the seller.
See also
Use any of these formats. Codex content is licensed under CC BY 4.0 — attribution required.
@misc{bronsonjob-bc_ptt_fthb_exemption,
author = {Job, Bronson},
title = {{BC First Time Home Buyer PTT exemption}},
howpublished = {BC Real Estate Codex},
year = {2024},
url = {https://www.bronsonjob.com/codex#bc.ptt.fthb_exemption},
urldate = {2026-09-21},
note = {Fact ID: bc.ptt.fthb_exemption, version 3.}
}Job, B. (2024). BC First Time Home Buyer PTT exemption. *BC Real Estate Codex*. Retrieved 2026-09-21, from https://www.bronsonjob.com/codex#bc.ptt.fthb_exemption
BC First Time Home Buyer PTT exemption — Bronson Job PREC, BC Real Estate Codex (2026-09-21). https://www.bronsonjob.com/codex#bc.ptt.fthb_exemption
Fact id: bc.ptt.fthb_exemption · v3 · machine-readable: /api/v1/facts/by-id/bc.ptt.fthb_exemption.json
Verified sources (1)· re-verified 2026-09-21Click to expand
Every claim on this page is sourced to a primary government, regulator, or industry-association URL. We re-verify quarterly; the verification dates below show when each source was last confirmed against the live government page.
- BC Governmentretrieved 2026-09-21First Time Home Buyers' Program — exemption amounthttps://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/property-taxes/property-transfer-tax/exemptions/first-time-home-buyers/current-amount
bc.ptt.fthb_exemption · v3View in Codex →License: This definition is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Cite as: "First Time Home Buyers' PTT Exemption", BC Real Estate Glossary by Bronson Job, https://www.bronsonjob.com/glossary/first-time-home-buyer-exemption.
