Quebec Election 2026: Which Home Buyers the Parties' Promises Actually Reach

Tax credit, QST rebate, loan: the campaign's home-ownership promises sound alike in the headlines and part ways in the details. They do not target the same buyer, and the line that separates them most clearly runs between newly built homes and resale properties. This article gives you a grid to read each one, without ranking any of them. For the election calendar and the first housing announcements, see our article on housing in the 2026 Quebec election.

Three tools, three different mechanics

According to the overview Radio-Canada published on September 16, 2026, « Les promesses des partis pour accéder à la propriété », the announced measures fall into three families. A tax credit, which lowers the income tax you owe by a fixed amount. A QST rebate, which returns part of the Quebec sales tax paid on a purchase. A loan, which advances money you will have to pay back.

These families differ in more than their amounts. A tax credit follows the person buying. A tax rebate follows the transaction, and therefore the type of property. A loan follows the value of the home. Two promises with similar dollar figures can end up reaching no buyer in common.

The parties appear here in alphabetical order of their official French names: Coalition avenir Québec, Parti libéral du Québec (Quebec Liberal Party), Parti québécois, Québec solidaire. No promise is ranked or endorsed. And a measure announced during a campaign is not a measure in force: none of what follows applies to a purchase signed before the October 5, 2026 vote.

The first-home tax credit: a fixed amount, new or resale

Quebec already has a tax credit for the purchase of a first home. It currently stands at $1,400. Its mechanics only look at the buyer: an eligible first-time buyer reduces their tax by an amount that depends neither on the price paid nor on whether the property is new or existing.

The Coalition avenir Québec proposes raising this credit to $7,000. The Parti québécois proposes a $3,000 tax credit.

A fixed amount has one consequence worth seeing before you compare: its relative weight shrinks as the price rises. The same sum matters more in a small purchase than in a large one. And a tax credit is claimed on your income tax return, not at the notary: it does not add to your down payment on closing day. The reported overview does not say whether the proposed credits would be refundable, meaning paid even to a buyer who owes no tax.

The QST rebate: help that only reaches new construction

QST does not apply to every real estate transaction. The resale of an existing house is not taxable: someone buying a resale property pays no QST on the price, so a QST rebate has nothing to give back. This is the sharpest dividing line of the whole campaign: a sales tax rebate can only reach the buyer of a newly built home.

The current program already provides a QST rebate on new housing, capped at $10,000. Only properties under $300,000 qualify today. The Quebec Liberal Party proposes raising that threshold to $500,000. Mechanically, this brings in buyers of new homes priced between $300,000 and $500,000, who are excluded today. It changes nothing for a resale buyer, whatever the price.

On top of its tax credit, the Parti québécois proposes a QST rebate of up to $45,000 for the purchase of a first home. The same limit applies: since no QST is paid on the resale of an existing house, this rebate can only bear on a new purchase. The reported wording adds a condition tied to the buyer, namely that it be a first home.

The loan: money advanced, not money given

Québec solidaire proposes a loan of up to 15% of the value of a new house, or 5% of the value of an existing house, with a maximum of $50,000.

Two features set it apart from the other families. First, a loan is repaid: it increases what a buyer can put on the table on purchase day, not what they own in the end. Second, its size follows the value of the property, and it treats new and resale homes differently through a different percentage rather than an exclusion.

A calculation based only on the reported parameters shows where the maximum kicks in. For a new house, 15% reaches $50,000 at a value of about $333,000; above that, the loan stops growing. For an existing house, 5% only reaches $50,000 at a value of $1,000,000. On resale homes, it is therefore the 5% rate, not the maximum, that limits the amount for any property under $1,000,000.

What happens to such a loan when you sell, its rank and its repayment, is a separate mechanism covered in our article on down payment loans recovered at resale. We do not repeat it here.

New build or resale: the line that splits the promises

Side by side, the promises sort themselves by type of property far more than by amount. The tax credit ignores the property: it follows the first-time buyer, whether the home is new or existing. The QST rebate only looks at new construction. The loan covers both, with a rate three times higher for new homes, 15% versus 5%.

A first-time buyer targeting a resale condo or a second-hand plex can only be affected by the first and third families. Someone buying in a new development could be touched by all three, subject to stacking rules the reported overview does not spell out. How such aid feeds into prices themselves is another question, covered in our article on first-time buyer aid and entry-level prices.

A four-question grid for any housing promise

Four questions are enough to place any home-ownership measure. Is it limited to first-time buyers? Does it cover new homes, resale homes, or both? Does it carry a price cap, and at what level? And is it money you receive or money you pay back? Applied to the reported promises, they produce the table below.

The last question separates the loan from everything else: it is the only measure in the table that has to be repaid. The first question groups the tax credits with the Parti québécois rebate, all tied to a first home in the reported wording, while the Liberal proposal widens the price threshold of the existing program.

What the grid cannot tell you yet

A « not specified » cell does not mean there would be no rule. It marks details the reported overview does not give, and that only the text of an adopted measure would settle: a possible income ceiling, whether a credit is refundable, stacking rules between measures, the effective date.

What you can do now depends on none of these details. Defining your own project, new or resale, first purchase or not, and in what price range, is enough to know which rows of the table concern you, and which never will, whatever the election outcome.