A large share of mortgage training material in circulation, and a large share of what brokers themselves learned before 2025, quotes figures that a single federal policy change made obsolete. Getting this module exactly right matters more than almost anything else in this course, because a broker who tells a client a $1.3 million purchase is uninsurable — true before December 2024, false after — is not giving slightly outdated advice, they are giving advice that actively costs that client a materially better rate tier.
Effective 15 December 2024, the maximum purchase price eligible for default mortgage insurance rose from $1 million to $1.5 million. A purchase at $1.5 million or above is uninsurable and requires a minimum 20% down payment regardless of any other factor in the file. Below that threshold, the tiered minimum down payment structure applies: 5% up to $500,000, plus 10% on the portion between $500,000 and $1.5 million.
This single change moved a meaningful share of properties in Canada's most expensive markets — parts of the Greater Toronto Area and Metro Vancouver in particular — from the uninsurable category back into insured or insurable territory, which is a materially different pricing conversation for those clients.
The second major change is easy to overstate. Insured mortgages have historically been capped at a 25-year amortization. Since 1 August 2024, a 30-year amortization has been available on insured purchases of newly constructed homes for first-time buyers, and since 15 December 2024 this was broadened to all first-time buyers, whether the home is new construction or resale, and separately to all buyers of new builds whether or not they are first-time buyers.
It is not, and this is the detail that most often gets flattened in casual conversation, available to a repeat buyer purchasing a resale home. A returning buyer buying an existing home with less than 20% down is still capped at 25 years. Confirm which of the two eligibility paths — first-time buyer, or new build — actually applies before promising a client the longer amortization.
In the same policy season, the federal government raised the Home Buyers' Plan RRSP withdrawal limit from $35,000 to $60,000 for a qualifying first-time buyer. It is not part of the mortgage insurance framework itself, but it is announced and discussed alongside the price cap and amortization changes so often that the three get bundled together in conversation — and bundled together in error when only one of the three numbers gets updated in someone's memory. Treat all three as a single dated policy package: $1.5 million, 30-year eligibility rules, and $60,000, all effective in the same window.
Refinances remain uninsurable regardless of any of these changes — nothing in the December 2024 package touched that rule. The GDS/TDS ceilings of 39% and 44% on insured files did not move. The minimum qualifying rate formula — the greater of contract rate plus 2% or 5.25% — is a separate OSFI mechanism, unaffected by this package. Treating this as a wholesale rewrite of insured lending rather than three specific, dated changes is itself a common and avoidable error.
A repeat buyer with 10% down is purchasing a resale (not newly built) home for $650,000. Can they access a 30-year amortization on this insured mortgage?
The 30-year amortization expansion is eligibility-gated, not universal: it applies to first-time buyers (on either resale or new build) and to buyers of new builds (whether or not they are first-time buyers) — a repeat buyer on a resale home fits neither path and stays at the 25-year maximum. The $1.5 million price cap is a separate rule governing whether a file can be insured at all, and passing it does not itself unlock the longer amortization. Resale homes were not removed from insured eligibility; they simply do not qualify for the extended amortization on their own for a repeat buyer.
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