OTTAWA — On the eve of a federal election this fall, the Liberal government is looking to help more Canadians buy their first homes by picking up a portion of their mortgage costs and increasing the amount they can borrow from their retirement savings for a down payment.
The means-tested incentive the Liberals unveiled Tuesday would only be available to households with incomes under $120,000 — roughly $50,000 more than the median household income as calculated by Statistics Canada — and on mortgages no more than four times the household’s total income. The measure, expected to cost $1.25 billion over three years beginning this fiscal year, would target Canadians “that face legitimate challenges entering housing markets” after qualifying for a mortgage, the budget document says. An additional $100 million would flow to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to help organizations that already provide the so-called “shared equity mortgages.”
The new measures could increase the annual number of new homebuyers nationally to 140,000 from 100,000 by lowering monthly payments without creating higher household debt loads, said Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who was confident the measures won’t cause a spike in housing prices. Economists and experts had been concerned that Morneau’s focus on helping millennials, in particular, get footholds in the market could juice home prices after years of trying to cool demand in places like Toronto and Vancouver. Federal efforts, such as a new financial “stress test” to make sure a buyer can afford a mortgage, have slowed prices from where they might have been.
“The concerns about stoking demand from some of these measures aren’t concerns that we would raise at this time.”
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