Real Estate

Advice on investment property ownership

  • Last Updated:
  • Mar 28th, 2019 6:12 pm
[OP]
Newbie
Sep 16, 2007
17 posts
Toronto

Advice on investment property ownership

I'm a single professional living by myself in my own condo (my primary residence) in Toronto and I have a modest paying job with my earning coming in around 98k.
I have committed to purchase another property in the suburbs but that would be an investment property.

To save on taxes (land transfer tax, personal income tax, when I sell capital gains tax, etc..), I was wondering if I should have this investment property under my mother's name (sole ownership) and I would be the guarantor for the mortgage (not sure if mortgage would approve).

OR have this purchase in a joint position with my mother.

My mother is in the low-income bracket so rent income and in the future when I sell for any capital gains would be taxed at a different rate for my mother.
Problem is, my mother also owns a house (her primary residence) and has a dependent (13 old) and get child benefits for low income family.
What would be the impact of this on my mother? If she has two properties, would she lost child benefit from govt.? and any other benefit would be impact?

Alternatively, if I enter the joint-ownership for this investment property, (somewhere I read online) I can claim the mortgage interest (100%) and property tax (100%) as my expense. I am single, I don't have any expense. With the new house expense, maybe I can get some tax return at the end of year. And maybe my mom can claim the rental income, with her tax bracket, it will be taxed minimum. But in the future, when we sell the investment property, how would the capital gains be taxed?

1 reply
Deal Addict
Feb 19, 2019
1970 posts
3096 upvotes
Stouffville ON
You would not be saving on land transfer tax if it’s in your mother’s name.

There are many mortgage brokers here and they can probably answer your questions regarding financing.

Owning properties would not impact her benefits, but the income will.

The same person that claims the rental income has to claim rental expenses, you can’t have her claim the revenues, and you claim the expenses, all of it is claimed proportionally to the ownership of the property, same applies to capital gains.



Much more details regarding your and your mother’s circumstances ( and the details of the property especially from the point of view of the rental profit/loss) would be needed to assess if it makes sense for you financially at this point of time. Bear in mind circumstances do change (incomes, marital, death, disagreements…..), you would really want to weigh the cons even if there is some financial gain.
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