First-Time Home Buyer Programs in Canada: What Exists, and the Order to Use Them In

Most first-time buyer articles hand you a list. The list is not the strategy. These programs do completely different jobs, one of them has a hard deadline attached to it, and if you line them up wrong you can burn the biggest one entirely. Here is what actually exists right now, what each one moves, and the order to use them in.

Start with the one that has a clock on it

If a new build is anywhere in your thinking, deal with this before anything else on the page. Ontario's March 2026 budget temporarily enhanced the provincial new housing rebate, and on an eligible new build it is worth up to $130,000. It is not a first-time buyer program, it is open to essentially any eligible buyer, and it runs on agreements signed between April 1, 2026 and March 31, 2027.

It is the largest number available to you by a wide margin, and it is the only one here with an expiry date. I broke down the tiers, the deadlines, and the rental-property angle in the full walk-through of the Ontario HST window. Read that one first if you are looking at pre-construction.

The federal GST rebate for first-time buyers

Separately, the federal First-Time Home Buyers' GST/HST rebate provides up to $50,000 of relief on a newly constructed home. It rebates 100% of the GST, or the federal portion of the HST, on a home valued up to $1 million, then phases out on a straight line between $1 million and $1.5 million. The agreement of purchase and sale generally has to be signed on or after May 27, 2025 and before 2031, with some provisions legislated to take effect retroactively to March 20, 2025. Construction has to begin before 2031 and be substantially complete before 2036. The CRA began accepting applications in March 2026.

These two do not stack. Where a purchaser qualifies for both the enhanced temporary Ontario rebate and the first-time buyer rebate, you receive the greater of the two, not both. Inside the Ontario window that generally resolves in your favour, because the provincial measure is the larger number. But it resolves as one rebate, and any budget built on adding them together will be short by tens of thousands of dollars.

FHSA: the strongest account, and the one people open too late

The First Home Savings Account is the best of the savings vehicles, because it is the only one that gives you a deduction on the way in and tax-free growth on the way out. An RRSP gives you the first. A TFSA gives you the second. The FHSA gives you both.

The mechanics: $8,000 of contribution room per year, $40,000 lifetime. Unused room carries forward, but only $8,000 of carryforward can be added to any single year, and it does not compound beyond that. Open an account and contribute nothing this year, and next year you have $16,000 of room, not more.

Two details that cost people money. First, the room only starts accumulating once you open the account, not when you turn 18. Opening an FHSA and funding it with nothing still starts your clock, which is why opening it now and funding it later is usually right even when you are years away from buying. Second, there is no over-contribution cushion the way an RRSP gives you $2,000 of grace. Excess contributions are taxed at 1% per month until you correct them.

Home Buyers' Plan: $60,000, but it is a loan to yourself

The Home Buyers' Plan lets you withdraw up to $60,000 from your RRSP tax-free toward a first home. Two qualifying buyers can pull up to $120,000 combined.

The word people skip is repay. This is not a withdrawal, it is an interest-free loan from your own retirement account. You repay it over a maximum of 15 years, at a minimum of one fifteenth per year, and repayments begin in the second calendar year after the withdrawal. Miss a year and that year's required repayment is added to your taxable income. One timing note worth confirming: withdrawals made between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2025 were given an extended grace period before repayments start, so check which grace period applies to your withdrawal year before you budget around it.

Used together, the FHSA and the Home Buyers' Plan represent up to $100,000 per person toward a purchase. That combination, not either one alone, is what makes a 20% down payment realistic for a lot of households that had written it off.

30-year amortizations and the $1.5 million insured cap

This is the change that moved actual purchasing power, and it took effect in December 2024. If you are a first-time buyer, you can get a 30-year amortization on an insured mortgage on any eligible home, new or resale. If you are not a first-time buyer, the 30-year option is typically only available on a newly built home. Separately, the price ceiling for an insured mortgage was raised to $1.5 million from $1 million, which opened insured financing on a range of properties that previously required 20% down.

Down payment minimums on an insured purchase remain 5% on the first $500,000, 10% on the portion between $500,000 and $1.5 million, and 20% above $1.5 million.

The 30-year amortization carries a premium surcharge, commonly 0.20% on top of your mortgage insurance premium. That is the honest trade. You get a lower monthly payment and more room under your debt service ratios, and you pay meaningfully more total interest over the life of the loan plus a bit more insurance up front. I am not against it. Where the payment is the binding constraint and income is expected to grow, 30 years is often the right call, and you can accelerate later. Just do not let anyone sell it to you as free.

The stress test did not go anywhere

None of the above removes the qualifying rate. On an insured mortgage you still qualify at the greater of your contract rate plus 2% or 5.25%, and lenders still want your ratios inside typical insurer guidelines, commonly around 39% GDS and 44% TDS, with a minimum credit score in the low 600s. This is where most first-time buyer plans actually break. I wrote the full walk-through in The B-20 Stress Test, Explained Without the Jargon. If your income is self-employed, read Self-Employed Mortgages in Canada as well, because the income averaging rules will change your number more than any program on this page.

Ontario land transfer tax rebates

Ontario refunds up to $4,000 of provincial land transfer tax for eligible first-time buyers, which fully covers the tax on a home up to roughly $368,000 and takes $4,000 off the bill above that. Buying inside the City of Toronto, there is a second, separate municipal land transfer tax with its own first-time buyer rebate of up to $4,475. Combined, that is up to $8,475 in Toronto and up to $4,000 everywhere else in the province.

To qualify you generally need to be at least 18, occupy the home as your principal residence, and never have owned a home anywhere in the world. That last condition is stricter than most people assume, and it is worldwide, not Ontario-wide.

The program that no longer exists

Worth naming, because it still comes up in almost every first meeting. The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive, the shared-equity program where the government contributed 5% to 10% of the purchase price in exchange for a share of your future appreciation, was discontinued. The last day to apply was in March 2024, and nothing replaced it directly. If someone tells you the government will chip in on your down payment, that is what they are remembering. Plan without it.

Where each program actually lands

This is the part that matters, and it is where the list format fails people. These programs hit three different buckets, and confusing them is how buyers arrive at closing short.

The FHSA and the Home Buyers' Plan are down payment. This is the only money here that increases the size of the mortgage you can support.

The land transfer tax rebates and the HST and GST relief are closing costs. This money does not raise your purchase price. It reduces the cash you need on closing day, on top of your down payment, alongside legal fees, title insurance, and adjustments.

The 30-year amortization and the $1.5 million insured cap are qualification. They change what you qualify for without changing what you have saved.

The mistake I see most often is counting a rebate toward a down payment. It is not down payment. In most cases you will not see it until the transaction closes, and your lawyer applies it against the tax owing rather than handing you a cheque.

The sequence

Open the FHSA first, even if you cannot fund it yet, because the room starts when the account opens. Fund the FHSA before the RRSP if your buying horizon is short, since the FHSA withdrawal is never repaid and the Home Buyers' Plan withdrawal is. Confirm your qualifying number under the stress test before you set a price range, not after. Then decide on the amortization. And if a new build is anywhere in your thinking, work backward from March 31, 2027, because that agreement date is the one deadline here you cannot recover once it passes.

Run your own numbers on the affordability calculator and bring me the output. If the number surprises you in either direction, that is usually the conversation worth having.