Four programs, and they stack. Used together by a couple, they are worth a meaningful share of a down payment.
First Home Savings Account
The best of them. Contributions are deductible like an RRSP, and qualifying withdrawals are tax free like a TFSA. $8,000 a year, $40,000 in a lifetime. Unused room carries forward, but only $8,000 of it, so the most you can ever put in during one year is $16,000.
Contribution room only starts accumulating once the account exists. Opening an FHSA with nothing in it starts the clock. A great many people lose a year of room for no reason other than not having got around to it.
Home Buyers' Plan
Withdraw up to $60,000 from your RRSP tax free toward a first home. A couple who both qualify can withdraw $120,000 between them.
It is a loan to yourself. You repay it into your RRSP over fifteen years, beginning the second year after withdrawal. Miss a year's repayment and that portion becomes taxable income.
Contributions must sit in the RRSP for at least ninety days before you can withdraw them under the plan. If you are planning to contribute and immediately withdraw, that timing decides whether it works.
Land transfer tax rebates
Ontario: up to $4,000, which covers the full provincial tax on a purchase up to roughly $368,000.
Toronto: a further $4,475 against the municipal tax, inside the city only.
Both are claimed by your lawyer at closing, so they reduce the cash you bring rather than arriving as a cheque afterwards.
The definitions differ slightly between programs, and the one that catches people is the same in all of them: you must never have owned a home anywhere in the world, and for the land transfer tax rebates your spouse must not have owned one while you were together.
The FHSA and the Home Buyers' Plan use a four-year lookback rather than a lifetime test, so someone who owned a home long enough ago can qualify again for those two while remaining ineligible for the rebates. Confirm your own position with your lawyer and accountant before you count on any of it.
These limits and rules were checked in July 2026 and they change. The CRA and the Ontario Ministry of Finance are the authorities.