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Effect of Land Transfer Taxes on Real Estate Markets: Evidence from Toronto
June 10 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
The City of Toronto has been levying land transfer taxes on property sales since January 1, 2008. While previous research has found that land transfer taxes reduce property sales volumes and prices, other studies have produced varying results on the impact of the tax. In this presentation, 2024-25 Graduate Fellow in Municipal Finance and Governance Peter Wu presented new research on the effects of the City’s land transfer tax on Toronto’s real estate market. His work employs a novel statistical method and uses a dataset of residential property sales in the Greater Toronto Area to explore how the tax has impacted transaction volumes, sale prices, economic outcomes, and municipal finances.
Speaker:
Peter Wu is the recipient of the 2024–25 Graduate Fellowship in Municipal Finance and Governance. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. He has worked previously on projects such as municipal revenues forecasting and data visualization of municipal finances. He is interested in conducting research on the effect of tax policy changes on real estate markets in urban areas such as Toronto.