Canada’s First-Time Home Buyer Incentive discontinued

Canada’s First-Time Home Buyer Incentive has been discontinued. The National Housing Strategy website says it will no longer accept submissions for the program after March 21.

The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive was developed to help qualified first-time homebuyers reduce their monthly mortgage payments. The program was a shared-equity mortgage with the government of Canada, which offered discounts on first-time buyers’ purchase of a home. The shared equity component of the incentive meant that the government shared in both the upside and downside of the property value.

By obtaining the Incentive, the borrower did not have to save as much of a down payment to be able to afford the payments associated with the mortgage. 

The homebuyer had to repay the Incentive based on the market value of the home at the time of repayment equal to the percentage of the original home value used to determine the Incentive.

The homebuyer would have to repay the Incentive after 25 years, or when the property is sold, whichever came first. The homebuyer could also repay the Incentive in full any time before, without a pre-payment penalty.