Housing Highlights From Federal Budget 2019

The federal budget came out yesterday & there were some minor actions targeted to first time buyers I wanted to highlight.

First off, don’t get excited. The impact in Vancouver is likely going to be limited, but basically the gov’t is increasing the home buyers plan RRSP withdrawn from $25k to $35k, effective immediately. Note that the funds still need to be repaid in the same 15 year window.

The second incentive is from CMHC which will provide 5% of a first time buyer’s down payment on a resale property & 10% on a new build. The buyer still needs at least 5% down, but this will help reduce borrowers mortgages to lower their payments.

The loan is interest free so from that perspective, why not take it. Lower payments, less interest. The funds will be repaid upon the sale of the home, but so far it is unclear how this would work exactly. CMHC might share in the capital gain or loss, receiving a portion of the sale price, but we will wait to see how this will be rolled out exactly.

There are requirements to meet this program, namely:
-household income under $120k
-borrowers must have the min 5% down
-the purchase price cannot exceed 4 times the buyers household income.

Based on this, the effective limit on purchases will be less than $500k so the impact of this is going to be limited in our market.

While the budget does allocate $10billion over 9 years for new rental homes, it does not bring in any tax breaks or reduced red tape to developers, which, in my view is a more productive & efficient way to attack these issues, but, hey, I’m not running the country!