The Home Buyers' Plan is a federal program that lets eligible first-time home buyers withdraw up to $60,000 from their registered retirement savings plans to put toward buying or building a qualifying home, without paying tax on the withdrawal. The withdrawn amount must be repaid to your RRSP over 15 years.
If your spouse or common-law partner also has an RRSP, each of you can withdraw up to $60,000, for a combined total of $120,000. The funds can go toward your down payment, closing costs, or both. You must intend to occupy the home as your primary residence within one year of purchasing it or completing its construction.
To qualify, you are considered a first-time home buyer if you or your current spouse or common-law partner didn't own a home in the past four-year period. This means the program is not limited to people who have literally never owned property. If you owned a home previously but have not owned one as a principal residence in the last four calendar years, you qualify again, and you can potentially use the Home Buyers' Plan more than once.
There are important timing rules. Your RRSP contributions must remain in the RRSP for at least 90 days before you can withdraw them under the Home Buyers' Plan, or the contributions may not be deductible for any year. You also need a written agreement to buy or build the home at the time of withdrawal, and you must buy or build the qualifying home by October 1 of the year after withdrawal. To make the withdrawal, you file CRA Form T1036 with your RRSP issuer. Your RRSP issuer will not withhold tax on withdrawn amounts of $60,000 or less.
Repayment works like an interest-free loan from yourself. For withdrawals made on or after January 1, 2026, repayment begins in the second year after the year you made your first withdrawal. A temporary relief measure extended that grace period to five years for withdrawals made between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2025. Each year, you must repay at least one-fifteenth of the total amount withdrawn by contributing to your RRSP and designating it as a Home Buyers' Plan repayment on Schedule 7 of your tax return. If you do not contribute the minimum amount and designate it as a repayment, the unpaid portion is added to your taxable income for that year. The consequence is not a penalty in the traditional sense; you simply lose the RRSP tax deferral on the unreturned portion.
You can withdraw amounts from your RRSP under the Home Buyers' Plan and make a qualifying withdrawal from your First Home Savings Account for the same qualifying home, provided you meet the conditions for each program. This makes it possible to layer both programs together for a larger down payment. For more on the FHSA, see our related article on the First Home Savings Account.
