Buying a presale on the North Shore, and what an assignment really costs

An assignment looks like a shortcut. Someone bought a presale two years ago, the building is nearly finished, and they want out. You take over their contract and skip the waiting. That is the pitch.

Here is what the pitch leaves out. The buyer of an assignment has no cooling-off period at all. Not the 7 days a presale buyer gets. Not the 3 business days a resale buyer gets. Neither one.

You also pay property transfer tax on the extra money you hand the first buyer, and 5% GST on top of it. This page shows where every one of those costs comes from, with a link to the rule itself.

On this page

• What you are actually buying: a contract, not a condo
• The right you give up: an assignment buyer has no cooling-off period
• Property transfer tax is charged on the premium too
• GST on the premium, and the deposit trap
• The first-time buyer GST rebate an assignment cannot rescue
• Two flipping taxes, two different clocks
• What the developer controls, and the register the CRA reads
• Your deposit, and who is allowed to hold it
• What the first buyer can still cancel for
• What the law does not give an assignment buyer
• If you are not a citizen or permanent resident
• Which city hall, and who to call
• Mistakes that cost money
• Questions people ask

What you are actually buying: a contract, not a condo

In an assignment you buy somebody’s purchase agreement with the developer. The home itself still belongs to the developer until the building is registered and the sale completes.

The person selling the contract is the assignor. You are the assignee. British Columbia’s Real Estate Development Marketing Act defines an assignment as “a transfer of some or all of the rights, obligations and benefits under a purchase agreement made in respect of a strata lot”.

That wording matters. You are stepping into obligations as well as benefits. If the first buyer agreed to something awkward, you inherit it.

The right you give up: an assignment buyer has no cooling-off period

This is the part almost nobody writes down, so start here.

A presale buyer gets 7 days. Section 21 of the Real Estate Development Marketing Act says a purchaser “may rescind the purchase agreement by serving written notice of the rescission on the developer within 7 days after the later of (a) the date that the purchase agreement was made, and (b) the date that the developer obtained … a written statement from the purchaser” acknowledging a chance to read the disclosure statement.

Those are calendar days, and they run from the later of the two dates, not from whichever came first. The BC Financial Services Authority puts it plainly for consumers on its guide to pre-sale purchases: “You have a period of seven days to cancel your contract with no penalties.”

Now read the definition the Act uses. A “purchaser” is “a purchaser, from a developer, of a development unit”. An assignment buyer does not buy from the developer. They buy from the first purchaser.

So the 7 days do not reach them. The same BCFSA consumer guide says it in one sentence: “The seven-day right to cancel the pre-sale contract does not apply to the new purchaser(s) through the assignment.”

The obvious next question is whether the 3-day right that resale buyers have fills the gap. It does not. The Home Buyer Rescission Period began on 3 January 2023 and gives a buyer up to 3 business days to back out, for a fee of 0.25% of the offer price.

BCFSA’s questions and answers for the industry address assignments directly. Asked whether the right of rescission applies to an assignment, the answer is: “No. The right of rescission does not apply to a contract in which a party’s rights under a contract of purchase and sale are assigned to another party.”

The same page also removes presales from that 3-day right, because they already have the 7-day one: “The right of rescission also does not apply to any purchase and sale where Section 21 of the Real Estate Development Marketing Act … would apply.”

Put those three situations next to each other and the gap is obvious.

You are buying	Can you cancel after signing?	How long	What it costs you	Where the rule is
A presale, from the developer	Yes	7 days, from the later of the contract date and your signed acknowledgement of the disclosure statement	Nothing. Deposit returned	Real Estate Development Marketing Act, section 21
A completed home, from an owner	Yes	3 business days after the offer is accepted	0.25% of the offer price	Home Buyer Rescission Period, from 3 January 2023
An assignment of a presale contract	No	None	Not applicable	BCFSA confirms neither right applies

The practical lesson is simple. Do your checking before you sign an assignment, because afterwards there is no way back that the law hands you. Anything you want in the way of conditions has to be written into the assignment agreement itself.

One honest caveat. BCFSA states this in one place, on the consumer guide above. The reason behind it is the definition of “purchaser” in section 1 of the Act, which is the stronger support. Ask your own lawyer to confirm it for your contract.

Property transfer tax is charged on the premium too

This is the most expensive surprise in an assignment, and it is the one most often left out.

The Province’s page on property transfer tax on a pre-sold strata unit says you “generally pay property transfer tax on the total amount you paid to acquire the property”. It then spells out what the total amount includes: money paid for upgrades or additions, and any other premium paid for an assignment of a written agreement.

The same page confirms who pays: “the tax due is calculated on the total amount paid by the transferee, who is the assignee.” That is you.

The Ministry of Finance says the same thing in Tax Bulletin PTT 024, which is dated October 2018: “Total consideration paid includes any additional amounts paid to obtain the right to purchase that unit from another person.”

The tax rates are 1% on the first $200,000 of value, 2% from $200,000 up to $2,000,000, and 3% above $2,000,000. A further 2% applies to residential value above $3,000,000.

Why the premium can cost you an exemption as well as tax

A newly built home can be exempt from property transfer tax. Since 1 April 2024 the Newly Built Home Exemption is full up to $1,100,000, and the Province says “the phase out range is $50,000 above the threshold, with the complete elimination of the exemption at $1,150,000”.

Because the premium counts toward the taxable amount, it can carry you over that line. The numbers below are invented to show the arithmetic. They are not North Shore market figures.

Illustration only	Buying the presale directly	Buying the same contract by assignment
Price in the contract with the developer	$1,050,000	$1,050,000
Premium paid to the first buyer	None	$80,000
Amount property transfer tax is charged on	$1,050,000	$1,130,000
Newly Built Home Exemption	Full exemption, under $1,100,000	Reduced, inside the $1,100,000 to $1,150,000 phase-out
Property transfer tax before any exemption	$19,000	$20,600
GST at 5% on the premium	None	$4,000

Push the premium past $100,000 in that illustration and the exemption disappears altogether. The premium has then cost the buyer the premium itself, the tax on it, and the exemption.

For completeness, the first-time buyers’ exemption is a different rule and a much lower ceiling. It is full where value is $835,000 or less and applies only to the first $500,000 of the price, with a partial exemption between $835,000 and $860,000.

GST on the premium, and the deposit trap

GST applies to the assignment. The Canada Revenue Agency states it as settled law in its guide for the home construction industry: “As of May 7, 2022, all assignment sales of newly constructed or substantially renovated residential housing are taxable for GST/HST purposes.”

Before that change, it depended on why the first buyer had signed. If they bought intending to live there, an assignment could escape GST. That test is gone. GST/HST Notice 323 made “all assignment sales, including those made by individuals” taxable, for agreements entered into after 6 May 2022.

The assignor collects the tax and sends it to the CRA. In practice that means it is built into what you are asked to pay, so ask how it has been calculated.

The deposit refund is only GST-free if the agreement says so

Part of what you hand over is not really a premium. It refunds the deposit the first buyer already paid the developer. That part can be left out of the GST calculation, but only on a condition, and the condition is a drafting one.

Notice 323 sets it out: where the assignment agreement “indicates in writing that a part of the consideration is attributable to the reimbursement of a deposit paid by the assignor to the builder under the purchase and sale agreement”, that amount is excluded from the consideration for the assignment.

If nobody writes that sentence into the agreement, GST can apply to the whole amount. On a large deposit that is a costly omission, and it is avoidable with one clause.

One warning about searching this yourself. An older CRA page, GI-120, still says the deposit is taxable “whether or not such an amount is separately identified”. That page was published in July 2011 and carries its own notice that it has not been updated for the May 2022 change. Notice 323 is the current position.

The first-time buyer GST rebate an assignment cannot rescue

There is now a federal GST rebate for first-time buyers of new homes, and it is large. It is also the one place where an assignment can quietly destroy a benefit, which is worth understanding before you sign.

The rebate is law. The Department of Finance confirmed that Bill C-4 received Royal Assent in March 2026, and that with Royal Assent “the Canada Revenue Agency can now process rebate claims”.

The CRA describes the amount in Excise and GST/HST News No. 122: 100% of the GST on a new home “valued up to $1 million”, “gradually reduced” between $1 million and $1.5 million, and no rebate at all “if a complex or unit is valued at $1.5 million or more”. Finance puts the saving at up to $50,000 per buyer.

The timing condition is the one to read carefully. The CRA’s who can apply page requires that you “entered into the agreement of purchase and sale for the home with the builder on or after March 20, 2025, and before 2031”.

Many websites print 27 May 2025 for that date. That was the date in the original announcement in May 2025, and Parliament moved it back before the bill passed. The enacted date is 20 March 2025.

Why this matters so much on an assignment

The date that counts is the date of the original agreement with the builder. Not the date of your assignment.

The legislation blocks the obvious workaround. As passed in Bill C-4, the Excise Tax Act provides that if an agreement of sale was entered into before 20 March 2025 and is “later varied, altered or assigned such that it is considered to be entered into after March 19, 2025, the agreement of sale is deemed to have been entered into before March 20, 2025”.

In plain words: taking over a contract signed before 20 March 2025 does not give you a fresh start for the rebate. The old date follows the contract.

Two things to say honestly here. This rule sits in the statute, and the CRA has not published consumer guidance on it, so a lawyer or accountant should confirm how it applies to you. And a presale signed years ago, which is exactly the kind of contract that gets assigned now, will usually fall on the wrong side of that date.

Two flipping taxes, two different clocks

There are two separate taxes aimed at short holdings, one federal and one provincial. They have different rules and different clocks, and people routinely satisfy one while being caught by the other.

The federal rule treats a quick sale as a business, not an investment. The CRA’s income tax folio on principal residences says profits from a flipped property “will be deemed to be business income and fully included in income” where the property was held “less than 365 consecutive days”.

It covers assignments by name. The same folio states that the rule “applies to profits arising from the disposition of the rights to purchase a residential property in Canada via an assignment sale”, where the rights are assigned before the end of the twelve-month ownership period. It applies to properties sold on or after 1 January 2023.

Business income means the whole profit is taxable. The half-rate treatment capital gains get does not apply, and neither does the principal residence exemption. The folio lists exceptions for certain life events, including a death, a separation, a serious illness or disability, the loss of a job and an eligible relocation.

The BC tax, and the clock that restarts when you take an assignment

The BC home flipping tax is imposed under the Residential Property (Short-Term Holding) Profit Tax Act, which “took effect on January 1, 2025”. The rate is “20 percent of net taxable income earned from a taxable property disposed of within 365 days”, and it “gradually decreases over the next 365 days. At 730 days, the tax no longer applies.”

It reaches presale contracts. The Province’s page on presale contracts says the tax “applies to the profit you earn from disposing of a presale contract that is a taxable property in British Columbia if the disposition occurred less than 730 days after you entered into the contract”.

For the first buyer, the clock usually works in their favour. The Province says “the day you acquire a presale contract is generally the date you pay for the contract, which is also the date you enter into the presale contract”. Years of construction count toward the 730 days.

For you, it starts again. The Province’s own example is blunt: where a person assigns the right to a buyer on 1 December 2025 and the home completes on 1 March 2027, “you will be considered to have acquired the property on December 1, 2025”.

So your two years begin on the day you take the assignment, not on the day the first buyer signed. If you complete and then sell soon afterwards, you can be inside the window even though the building took years.

	Federal property flipping rule	BC home flipping tax
In force from	1 January 2023	1 January 2025
What it does	Deems the profit to be business income, fully taxable	A separate tax on the profit
Rate	Your own income tax rate, on the whole profit	20% within 365 days, decreasing after that
When you are clear	After 365 days	After 730 days
Does it cover assignments?	Yes, named expressly	Yes, assigning is a disposition
When the clock starts if you took an assignment	When you acquired the right	The date of the assignment
Exceptions	Listed life events	Separate exemptions apply, check the Province’s page

What the developer controls, and the register the CRA reads

No assignment happens without the developer’s consent. That is the first thing to establish, before money or expectations move.

BCFSA’s policy statement on disclosure requires the disclosure statement to carry the sentence “Without the developer’s prior consent, any assignment of a purchase agreement is prohibited.” A developer who does not allow assignments at all must say so.

Many developers charge a fee for consenting. There is no published standard figure, and BCFSA treats the question as a matter of contract rather than regulation. Its questions and answers on strata assignments say it “depends on the terms of the purchase agreement”, and encourage buyers to get legal advice on whether a fee can be charged at all.

So read the assignment clause in the contract before you negotiate a price. The fee is whatever that contract allows, and quoted ranges you find online are not a rule.

The assignment is reported, and the CRA sees it

Since 1 January 2019 assignments of condo and strata purchase agreements go into a provincial register. The Province’s page for developers says they “must not consent to any assignment of a purchase agreement unless they first collect the prescribed information from each party to the agreement”, and that information “must be filed in CSAIR within 30 days after the end of each quarter”.

The register is not private to the Province. Its main page says the information is “shared with other agencies, such as the BC Financial Services Authority and Canada Revenue Agency, to ensure assignment transactions are reported and the appropriate taxes assessed”.

The Province tells assignors the consequence directly: “You must report any profit made on your income tax return, which will be checked against information in the CSAIR.”

That is worth knowing on both sides of the deal. An assignment is a reported transaction, so the tax questions above are not theoretical.

Your deposit, and who is allowed to hold it

Presale deposits do not sit with the developer by default. Section 18 of the Real Estate Development Marketing Act says a developer who receives a deposit “must promptly place the deposit with a brokerage, lawyer, notary public or prescribed person who must hold the deposit as trustee in a trust account in a savings institution in British Columbia”.

There is a way for a developer to use that money before completion, and it has conditions. Under section 19 a developer may do so where they enter into a deposit protection contract for that deposit and give the purchaser notice of it.

So two fair questions to ask: who is holding the deposit, and is there a deposit protection contract. Ask them in writing.

What the first buyer can still cancel for

Beyond the 7 days, a presale purchaser keeps some rights. They are worth knowing because an assignment buyer is standing in that person’s shoes for everything except the rescission right.

A developer may only market under an initial disclosure statement for a limited period. BCFSA’s policy statements on early marketing and on adequate arrangements both set that period at 12 months from the date the disclosure statement was filed.

If the purchaser does not receive an amendment setting out an issued building permit, or a satisfactory financing commitment, within those 12 months, they “may at his or her option cancel the purchase agreement at any time after the end of that 12-month period until the required amendment is received”.

Note one caveat. BCFSA runs a pilot that extends the early marketing period to 18 months for larger developments, so check which period applies to the project in front of you.

A purchaser may also cancel where they were entitled to a disclosure statement and did not get one, or where the disclosure statement contains a misrepresentation or an omission.

Since 1 April 2025 there is also a plain-language summary to read first. BCFSA requires developers to attach a completed “Summary of Pre-sale Risks and Buyer Rights” form in front of the cover page of the disclosure statement. Ask for it, and read it before the contract.

What the law does not give an assignment buyer

Here is a gap worth closing with a clause in your own agreement.

The Real Estate Development Marketing Act contains no requirement for a developer to give the disclosure statement, or any amendment to it, to an assignment buyer. The duty runs to a “purchaser”, and that word means somebody buying from the developer.

You may therefore be bound by amendments you have never seen. Changes to the layout, the size of the unit, the common facilities or the completion dates can all have been amended since the first buyer signed.

Because the Act does not hand you those documents, make it a term of the assignment agreement that the assignor delivers the disclosure statement and every amendment, and that you have time to read them. Your lawyer should draft that, not you.

If you are not a citizen or permanent resident

Canada’s prohibition on the purchase of residential property by non-Canadians is still in force. The Department of Finance announced in February 2024 that the ban, then due to expire on 1 January 2025, “will be extended to January 1, 2027”.

The definition of a purchase is wide. The regulations say “the acquisition, with or without conditions, of a legal or equitable interest or a real right in a residential property constitutes a purchase”.

I am not going to tell you how that applies to an assignment, because the government has not published guidance on that specific question and the penalties include a fine and a court-ordered sale. Take legal advice before you sign anything. This is the clearest case on this page for paying a lawyer first.

Which city hall, and who to call

The North Shore is three separate local governments, and a presale project belongs to exactly one of them. Permits, building records and zoning questions go to that one.

Local government	Main line	For building and property questions
District of North Vancouver	604-990-2311	Building and permits 604-990-2480, building@dnv.org, 355 West Queens Road
City of North Vancouver	604-985-7761	Building Division 604-982-9675, propertyinformation@cnv.org
West Vancouver	604-925-7000	Planning 604-925-7055, permits 604-925-7040, info@westvancouver.ca

Call them early rather than late. A five-minute phone call before you sign is worth more than a careful reading afterwards.

Mistakes that cost money

• Assuming you can change your mind. You cannot. There is no cooling-off period on an assignment.
• Budgeting property transfer tax on the contract price. It is charged on the price plus the premium plus paid upgrades.
• Forgetting the premium can cost you the Newly Built Home Exemption as well as the tax on it.
• Leaving the deposit refund undescribed in the agreement. Say in writing which part refunds the deposit, or GST can apply to all of it.
• Assuming the GST rebate follows the assignment. The test is the date of the original agreement with the builder.
• Thinking the construction years count toward your BC flipping tax clock. Your clock starts at the assignment.
• Agreeing a price before reading the assignment clause. The developer’s fee and conditions live there.
• Taking the contract without the disclosure statement and its amendments. Nothing in the Act requires anyone to give them to you.
• Treating a number from a website as the rule. Several widely repeated dates and fee ranges are wrong or superseded.

Questions people ask

Can I back out of an assignment after I sign?

Not under any statutory right. The 7-day presale right does not reach an assignment buyer, and BCFSA confirms the 3-business-day right does not apply to assignments either. Anything you want has to be a condition in the agreement.

Do I pay property transfer tax on the premium?

Yes. The Province says the taxable total includes any premium paid for an assignment, and paid upgrades.

Is GST charged on the whole amount I pay the first buyer?

GST applies to the assignment. The portion that refunds the first buyer’s deposit can be excluded, but only if the assignment agreement states in writing that it is a deposit reimbursement.

How much is the developer’s assignment fee?

There is no published standard. BCFSA treats it as a question of what your purchase agreement says. Read the assignment clause and ask a lawyer whether the fee is permitted.

Can the developer simply refuse?

Consent is required, and the disclosure statement has to say if assignments are not permitted at all. Check that before you plan on assigning.

Will the CRA find out about my assignment?

The deal is filed in a provincial register, and the Province says that information is shared with the Canada Revenue Agency and checked against the profit reported on a tax return.

Does the first-time buyer GST rebate apply if I take over a presale?

The agreement with the builder has to have been entered into on or after 20 March 2025. The legislation prevents an assignment from resetting an earlier date, so an older contract will not qualify. Get this checked by an accountant.

If you are looking at a specific assignment on the North Shore, send me the address and the project. I will read the assignment clause with you and tell you what the tax looks like before you commit to anything.

Read next

• What to look for in a strata depreciation report
• A first-time buyer’s guide to the rules in BC
• What your North Vancouver home is worth, and how that is worked out
• When to list your North Shore home
• What breaks in an older North Shore house
• All of my North Shore guides
• این مطلب به فارسی: خرید پیش‌فروش در نورث شور

General information only, not advice on any specific property, contract or tax position. Tax and real estate rules change, and several of the rules on this page have pending or recent changes. Confirm the current position with the authority that owns it: the Canada Revenue Agency for GST and income tax, the Province of British Columbia for property transfer tax and the home flipping tax, the BC Financial Services Authority for presale and rescission rules, and the District of North Vancouver, City of North Vancouver or West Vancouver for anything municipal. Take legal and accounting advice before committing money. Every figure, date and quotation here was verified at its primary source on 2 October 2026, and then verified again in a separate pass. Last reviewed October 2026.

Written by Tom Jahed, licensed REALTOR®, Vanak Realty, North Vancouver.