Question Period Note: First-Time Home Buyer Incentive

• One of our responsibilities as a government is to support a healthy and stable housing market – one in which middle-class families and first-time home buyers have the possibility to buy their first home without having to take on excessive debt.
• The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive makes housing more affordable by reducing barriers to homeownership for first-time home buyers.
• The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive gives eligible first-time home buyers the ability to lower their borrowing costs by financing a portion of their home directly with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
• The Incentive provides funding of 5 per cent of the home purchase price for existing homes, and 5 or 10 per cent for newly constructed homes, to encourage home construction to help address housing supply shortages.
• The Government is reviewing the Incentive to ensure its effective implementation and that it continues to help first-time home buyers in realizing their goal of home ownership.

The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive was announced in Budget 2019 and launched on September 2, 2019, with the goal of helping to make homeownership more affordable for first-time home buyers. It is a shared equity mortgage provided by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation that gives eligible first-time home buyers the ability to lower their borrowing costs by sharing the cost of buying a home.
The program is capped at $1.25 billion over three years. The Incentive is limited to first-time home buyers with a maximum qualifying income of $120,000 and total borrowing is limit to four times income.
The Minister of Families, Children and Social Development’s mandate letter includes direction to “ensure the effective implementation of the new First-Time Home Buyer Incentive and to increase the qualifying value in places where houses cost more like the Greater Toronto, Vancouver, and Victoria regions.” Under the National Housing Act, the Minister of Finance is responsible for approving the program’s terms and conditions.

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