2025 Fall Budget: Housing Updates
Is there anything (mortgagely) exciting from the recent budget?
Housing remains a key focus, though with nothing much new on the immediate home buying or mortgage-rule front.
As the ink flows ... into action?
The Carney Liberals' 2025 Federal Budget was tabled on November 3, formalizing the pre-release of major housing initiatives, including the Build Home Canada (BHC) agency and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's (CMHC) most recent Housing Catalogue.
The Carney Liberal government aims to incentivize faster home building, partly by harnessing and accelerating factory-build processes to increase affordable supply and "become a global leader in housing innovation."
The budget allocates approximately $25 billion in new measures and commits to about $130 billion in total federal housing commitments over the next five years — including $13 billion underpinning the BCP initiative and $2.8 billion to expand Indigenous housing in urban, rural, and northern projects.
Here is a summary of the main initiatives.
Build Canada Homes: Addressing the housing crunch.
An ambitious strategy to unlock 3.5 million new homes by 2030 through Build Homes Canada — a new agency with $13B to play with — intends to action modern methods of construction, such as prefab housing, to increase non-market and affordable-market supply significantly:
- Deliver housing at scale
- Expand non-market and community housing on public or surplus land
- Demonstrate financial viability and leverage other investments
- Use innovative building methods and Canadian-made materials
Read more here: Prefab revival: Can factory-built homes fix affordability?
Confirmed: GST relief for some first-time home buyers.
Announced and running since May 2025, the budget confirms a 100% GST rebate (elimination) for first-time home buyers of newly built homes up to $1M, and a scaled rebate between $1M and $1.5M.
Read more here: GST Rebate on New Homes: How It Works
Canada Mortgage Bonds: Annual limit increases to $80 billion.
The CMB program was expanded again, raising the annual issuance limit to $80 billion, up from $60 billion, with the additional $20 billion to be used in support of CMHC-insured, multi-unit rental housing.
This program primarily affects lenders and insurers, allowing them more room to offer CMB investment, while encouraging multi-family housing builds — one more indirect mechanism that could eventually help ease demand and rental (and, indirectly, home) prices.
And what is to be written out:
Canada Secondary Suite Loan Program (not that there ever was one).
A Secondary Suite program, announced under the Trudeau government's Spring 2024 budget, has been formally shelved. This program offered borrowers mortgage default-insured refinance funds to construct a secondary suite, to encourage density in already established homes.
However, it didn't see buy-in from mortgage lenders and insurers, as the hiccups of when and how to provide funds to homeowners for suite construction prevented its adoption.
Read more here: Add a Secondary Suite With An Insured Refinance
Underused Housing Tax
This 1% tax, implemented in 2022, discouraged foreign ownership (and domestic small corporations and trusts) of vacant or underutilized residential properties — and will be eliminated with this budget.
On again, off again (this time for good) — Greener Homes Grant
A program that grants homeowners up to $5,000 for eligible energy-efficiency upgrades, such as heat pumps, insulation, and windows, is being phased out.
While the ink dries, get great advice.
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More words to the (mortgage) wise
Keeping Track of Mortgage Rule Changes
How does the recent barrage of insured and uninsured mortgage changes affect you?
Prefab revival: Can factory-built homes fix affordability?
The prefab housing catalogue is back. Here's how this strategy could turn the page on the housing crunch.
GST Rebate on New Homes: How It Works
As a first-time buyer for a newly built home, a 100% GST rebate may help you save.