Buying Your First Home in Niagara: The Programs You Can Use in 2026

Most first-time buyers I meet know about one or two of these. Almost nobody knows about all of them, and a couple of them are worth five figures.

So here’s the whole list in one place. Each one comes with the current figure, the date the government page was last updated, and a link so you can verify it yourself. I re-opened every one of these pages on 24 August 2026 before I wrote any of this down.

Some of these you’ll use while you’re saving. Some arrive at closing. One of them is closed right now and reopens next year. That’s exactly why it’s worth knowing about today.

This is the one to open first, ideally years before you buy.

A First Home Savings Account is for a first-time home buyer who’s saving to buy or build a first home. The CRA states that “your FHSA participation room in the first year you open your FHSA is $8,000”, and that “contributions to an FHSA are generally deductible and can be used to reduce your tax” (Canada Revenue Agency, First Home Savings Account).

So you get the deduction going in, the way an RRSP works. Then a qualifying withdrawal to buy your first home comes out tax free, the way a TFSA works. That combination is unusual, and it’s why the FHSA generally beats saving the same money anywhere else when a first home is the plan.

There are further limits on total contributions and on how long the account can stay open. Check the current ones on the CRA page above rather than here, because they’re the sort of figure that tends to change.

The room doesn’t start building up until you open the account. So open it, even if you can’t contribute anything to it yet.

If you already have an RRSP, this is how you get at that money without a tax bill.

The CRA states the current limit plainly: “the HBP withdrawal limit is $60,000”, for a withdrawal from your RRSPs “to buy or build a qualifying home” (Canada Revenue Agency, the Home Buyers' Plan). It isn’t a grant. It’s a loan from yourself, and you repay it over a 15-year period.

When that 15-year clock starts is the part that’s worth knowing right now. The CRA says the temporary relief deferring the start of the repayment period by an additional three years “was extended for participants making a first withdrawal between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2028”. That means the repayment period “would start the fifth year following the year in which a first withdrawal was made”. Their own example: withdraw in 2026 and your first repayment year is 2031.

That’s real breathing room in the years when a new house is at its most expensive. It extends the earlier relief that covered first withdrawals between January 2022 and December 2025. Both windows exist, and 2026 falls inside the more recent one.

You can use the FHSA and the Home Buyers’ Plan on the same qualifying home. They aren’t mutually exclusive, and most buyers who have both should use both.

Five per cent is the headline number, but it’s only the whole answer below $500,000.

The minimum down payment is 5 per cent on a home priced at $500,000 or less. Above that it’s 5 per cent on the first $500,000 plus 10 per cent on the portion above it, and a home priced above $1,500,000 can’t be insured at all (CMHC, mortgage loan insurance explained, published 30 June 2025).

At the July 2026 Niagara benchmark of $572,200 (CREA, board statistics, July 2026) that means $25,000 on the first $500,000 plus $7,220 on the rest, so $32,220. That figure is my own arithmetic from the rule above, and it isn’t a published number.

Anything under 20 per cent down means mortgage loan insurance. The premium gets added to your mortgage rather than paid up front.

This one comes off what you owe on closing day. That’s exactly when your bank balance is at its thinnest.

Ontario refunds a first-time buyer up to $4,000 of land transfer tax, which means no land transfer tax at all on the first $368,000 of the purchase price (ontario.ca, land transfer tax refunds for first-time homebuyers, page last updated 10 February 2026).

Above $368,000 the refund still comes off the top. You claim it through your lawyer at closing, so tell them you’re a first-time buyer well before the day.

How much tax there is to refund depends on the price, and the bands aren’t intuitive. I’ve worked it out at three Niagara price points here: land transfer tax in Ontario, what you actually pay.

This one is small and easy to overlook, and it costs you nothing.

If you’re a first-time buyer, you can claim the home buyers’ amount on your tax return. The CRA sets the claim at “up to $10,000 for the purchase of a qualifying home” (Canada Revenue Agency, line 31270). It’s a non-refundable credit. If more than one of you is eligible for the same home, you can split the claim between you.

What it’s actually worth to you depends on the credit rate and on your own return. Get that number from your accountant rather than from a real estate agent. Either way it arrives at tax time and not at closing, so don’t count it as part of your closing funds.

This one only applies to a newly built home rather than a resale. It’s also the largest number on this page.

Ontario’s Enhanced New Housing Rebate gives back “100 per cent of the provincial portion of the HST on eligible new homes and eligible rental units valued up to $1 million, for up to $80,000 in provincial relief per eligible new home”. That $80,000 maximum also applies to eligible homes valued above $1 million and up to $1.5 million (Government of Ontario, 2026 budget, HST relief on new homes).

The dates are specific, and they genuinely matter. For a home bought from a builder, the rebate is generally available where the agreement of purchase and sale was entered into “on or after April 1, 2026, and on or before March 31, 2027”. Construction has to begin on or before 31 December 2028 and be substantially completed on or before 31 December 2031.

There’s a federal new-build rebate as well. Ontario has also separately announced a first-time buyer rebate of the full provincial portion. I’m not putting figures on either of those here, because I couldn’t verify them on a government page on the day I wrote this. A number I can’t source is a number I won’t publish. Ask your builder and your accountant to confirm what applies to your agreement before you sign it.

This is the local one, and it’s the one nobody outside the region seems to know about.

Niagara Region runs an interest-free down payment loan for first-time buyers worth 10 per cent of the purchase price, to a maximum of $66,200, on homes priced up to $662,000. Household income has to be below $95,100 for one person or $113,700 for two or more (Niagara Region, homeownership program).

It’s closed for 2026. Applications reopen in 2027. That isn’t a reason to forget about it. It’s a reason to be prepared, because the buyers who get it are the ones with the pre-approval and the paperwork already done when the window opens.

I’ve written out the eligibility rules, the property rules and what to have ready in full here: the Welcome Home Niagara program.

Programs are only half the picture. What you can buy with them is the other half.

In July 2026 the MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark for the Niagara board was $572,200, down 5.5 per cent year over year. The region had 3,354 active listings against 609 sales, which is 5.5 months of inventory, and the average sale price was $662,239 (CREA, board statistics, July 2026).

Those are board-wide figures for the whole Niagara Association of REALTORS area. No official source publishes a benchmark price for St. Catharines, Niagara Falls or Welland on their own, so anyone quoting you a per-city number is quoting a private data aggregator.

What five and a half months of inventory means for you as a first-time buyer is that you have time. You can see a house twice. You can put a home inspection condition in your offer without losing the deal. That wasn’t true here in 2021, and it’s worth taking advantage of while it lasts.

Everything above applies anywhere in Niagara. If you’re looking in St. Catharines, there are a few more things to know before you set a budget.

I haven’t found a City-run first-time buyer program. stcatharines.ca doesn’t list a first-time buyer program run by the City itself (checked 2 October 2026). The City’s housing incentives, paid for through the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, are grants to property owners and builders for adding new homes, not help for people buying one (City of St. Catharines, Housing Accelerator Funding). The down payment help available in St. Catharines is the Region’s Welcome Home Niagara loan, covered above, which is closed for 2026 and reopens in 2027.

You may come across the City’s grant for adding a second unit to a house: up to 70 per cent of eligible costs, to a maximum of $40,000 for a unit inside the home or $80,000 for one built outside it. The City’s Community Improvement Plan page carries an update dated 16 April 2026: “funding has been depleted. The ADU Program is closed.” (City of St. Catharines, Community Improvement Plan, checked 2 October 2026). The City’s Housing Accelerator Funding page still describes the program as accepting applications, so if a basement apartment is part of how you plan to afford a house, confirm with the City before you count on that money.

There’s no city land transfer tax. The only municipal land transfer tax Ontario’s land transfer tax page mentions is the City of Toronto’s (ontario.ca, land transfer tax, page last updated 2 January 2026). In St. Catharines you pay the provincial tax only, and the first-time buyer refund comes off that.

What the board figures mean for a St. Catharines budget. The newest board figures are for August 2026, when the MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark for the Niagara board was $569,800, down 6.2 per cent year over year (CREA, board statistics, August 2026). Like the July figures above, they cover the whole board rather than St. Catharines alone, so use them as a starting point and not as a St. Catharines price.

The last two columns are my own arithmetic, and they aren’t published figures. The down payment uses the CMHC rule above. The land transfer tax uses the ontario.ca rate bands (ontario.ca, calculating land transfer tax, page last updated 22 April 2026), less the full $4,000 refund.

At the apartment benchmark the refund covers the whole tax, so a first-time buyer would pay no land transfer tax at all. All four benchmarks also sit below Welcome Home Niagara’s current $662,000 price cap, which is one more reason to have your paperwork ready for 2027.

Budget for property tax from the tax bill, not the price. St. Catharines’ 2026 urban residential tax rate is 1.842187 per cent, a combined rate covering the City, the Region and education, and the City says “most properties in St. Catharines are taxed under the urban rate” (City of St. Catharines, tax payments and rates, rate approved 13 April 2026).

That rate is multiplied by the property’s assessed value, and MPAC says: “Property assessments for the 2026 property tax year will continue to be based on January 1, 2016 assessed values” (MPAC, 9 December 2025). The City’s own example uses the average St. Catharines home, valued at $258,000, for a 2026 bill of $4,752.85. So the purchase price won’t tell you the tax. Ask for the home’s most recent tax bill instead, and build that number into your monthly budget alongside the mortgage.

If St. Catharines is where you want to buy, my St. Catharines page has more on the city itself.

Every program above helps you get to the door. You’ll need a separate pile of money to get through it.

Land transfer tax, legal fees, title insurance, the home inspection and adjustments for whatever the seller prepaid all land in the same week. I’ve listed them with sources here: hidden costs of buying a home in Ontario.

Budget for those separately from your down payment. The buyers who get caught short are almost always the ones who’ve put every last dollar into the down payment.

I’ll sometimes guide you away from a home when I don’t believe it truly fits your lifestyle or long-term goals. That’s the whole job, and it matters most on a first purchase, because you have nothing to compare it to yet.

In practice, that means we start before the house hunting does. We look at what you can actually afford once closing costs are counted, and which of the programs above you qualify for. We look at what your down payment looks like against the current benchmark, and what you’re prepared to compromise on.

If you want to see how the whole buying process runs, my buying page walks through it step by step.

Let’s turn “I’m just looking” into a real plan. Get in touch and we’ll go through the list together.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, tax or financial advice. Program figures and deadlines change. Check the linked government pages, and talk to your lawyer, accountant or mortgage professional before you rely on any of it.