The closing-costs post on this site works a $700,000 purchase line by line and stops, deliberately, at development charges: set by the municipality and the agreement, not by any provincial table — “a capped figure in your agreement is a fact; an estimate from anyone else is a guess.” This post fills that line the only way this catalogue honestly can: as a census of what builders have actually published. Of the catalogue’s 168 records, 27 carry a development-charge or levy line in their incentives or deposit text — 15 of them in KWCG. The other 141 records say nothing about levies at all. Both halves of that count are the story, because the 27 promises are not one promise: they come in five wordings, and the wordings are worth different amounts of money.
The five wordings on record
1. The charge itself is $0 — 9 records. The shortest line in the census: “$0 development charges” (Urban Towns at Wallaceton, Marquis Series at Hazel Glenn). Cadence records it twice over — “$0 development charges” and “$0 levies”. Alister at Solterra adds a rider: “$0 development charges (confirm current terms)”. Marquis Modern Towns carries the promise inside a longer line (“development charges at $0”), and Nature’s Grand phrases it as “No development charges”.
2. Capped at $0 — 5 records. “Development charges capped at $0” (Activa at Trussler West, Clairmont, Northside). The Village of Hillsburgh’s line adds “(confirm current terms)”; The Heights of Harmony words it as “$0 capped development-charge levies”. A cap set at zero and a charge set at zero arrive at the same place by different paper: one fixes the amount, the other fixes the ceiling the amount cannot cross.
3. Only the increases are capped — 3 records. “Development charge increases capped at $0” (Wildflowers, Upper Joshua Creek); Moffat Creek: “$0 development charge increases (confirm current offers)”. This is the distinction that matters most in the whole census. The charge itself is still payable, at whatever the municipality sets; what is fixed at $0 is its growth between signing and closing. A buyer who reads group 3 as group 1 has misread their closing costs by the full levy.
4. A dollar cap above $0 — 5 records. Westwood Village Preserve: “Development charges capped at $30,000”. Avon Park: capped at $10,000. Wyndfield and Empire Legacy: $7,500 each. TEK Tower caps its levies by unit size — $6,900 for 1-bed+den and smaller, $8,900 for 2-bed, $10,900 for 3-bed, plus taxes. A figure in the agreement is a budgetable fact; these five records publish the figure with the promise.
5. A cap with no figure published — 5 records. “Capped development levies” (DUO at Station Park, Louie Waterloo Residences, Greengate Village, The Nine); Wild Indigo: “Development charges capped (confirm current terms)”. A cap whose number is not published is a promise to negotiate, not a number to budget — the cap exists, and its value will be set in the agreement or not at all.
Three records, read closely
Marquis Series at Hazel Glenn (Cambridge) is a small record carrying all three closing numbers: the “$0 development charges” line sits beside a from-price of $619,381 and a deposit ladder published to the dollar. Price, deposit and levy line — the three closing-relevant numbers a buyer budgets first — all on one record:
Deposit schedule — Marquis Series at Hazel Glenn, Cambridge
Marquis Series at Hazel Glenn · Treasure Hill · Cambridge · pricing on request
$15,000 on signing; $5,000 at 60 days; $10,000 at 90, 120 and 150 days ($50,000 total over 150 days)
Northside pairs its “capped at $0” with a tax-free-guaranteed price — two different kinds of certainty on one record: the tax figure guaranteed by the builder’s program, the levy figure fixed by a cap. Its launch breakdown takes the rest of that record apart.
Upper Joshua Creek carries the group-3 wording, and its pricing breakdown already teaches the matching skill for prices: read what the line actually fixes. Here, what is fixed is the escalation only.
The silence of the other 141
Silence is not a cap, and it is not a charge either — it is an absence. Municipal development charges exist whether a record mentions them or not; what a silent record tells you is that the builder has published no promise about them, so the figure will arrive where it always arrives: in the agreement’s adjustments schedule, the document the closing-costs post ends on and How to read a builder price list teaches you to ask for. The questions, in order: is there a cap; is it a figure or a formula; and is it in the agreement, or only in the brochure? A group-5 wording answers the first question and neither of the others. A silent record answers none of them — which is itself the answer a buyer needs before signing, while the worksheet can still do something about it.
The honest gaps
- The census counts the wordings as recorded on November 3, 2026. Several lines carry their own “confirm current terms” riders, and incentive text is the fastest-changing text in any record.
- A record’s levy line states the builder’s published position, not any individual agreement. The agreement governs, and a cap that is not in it is a brochure claim.
- Nothing here estimates a levy for a silent record. That number does not exist until the municipality and the agreement produce it — estimating it anyway is the practice this catalogue was built to refuse.