Minimum down payment in Ontario: worked out for Toronto prices

The minimum down payment rules, and then the arithmetic

In Canada the minimum down payment is tiered. On a purchase price of $500,000 or less it is 5%. Between $500,000 and $1.5 million it is 5% of the first $500,000 plus 10% of everything above $500,000. At $1.5 million or more it is 20%, and default insurance is not available at all. Below 20% down, mortgage insurance is required.

A lender can also require insurance at 20% down or more — this is common for self-employed borrowers or where credit has been impaired. If that applies to you, the self-employed page is the more useful starting point.

Most pages stop at that paragraph. Below, I have worked the tiered calculation out at four Toronto-relevant prices, shown what the insurance premium adds in each case, and then explained the two places where the cash requirement is larger than people plan for.

The $900,000 example, worked in full

Take the most common Toronto question. On a $900,000 purchase, the minimum down payment is 5% of the first $500,000, which is $25,000, plus 10% of the remaining $400,000, which is $40,000. Total: $65,000, or 7.22% of the price.

That gives you a mortgage of $835,000 before insurance. The loan-to-value is 92.78%, which falls in CMHC's 90.01% to 95% band, where the premium is 4.00% of the total loan. Four per cent of $835,000 is $33,400. That premium is added to the mortgage, so you would be financing $868,400.

Then the part that catches people. In Ontario the insurance premium is subject to provincial sales tax, and the PST cannot be added to the loan. It is cash, at closing, on top of your down payment and on top of your other closing costs. Nobody budgets for it because nobody mentions it.

So the honest cash requirement on a $900,000 purchase at the minimum down payment is $65,000, plus PST on a $33,400 premium, plus land transfer tax — two of them in Toronto — plus legal fees, title insurance, adjustments and a status certificate if it is a condominium. The $65,000 figure is the start of the list, not the end of it.

Reading that table properly

Going from the $65,000 minimum to $90,000 — an extra $25,000 of savings — crosses from the 4.00% band into the 3.10% band and cuts the premium from $33,400 to $25,110. That is $8,290 less premium, and less PST on it, for $25,000 more cash. It also means $33,290 less financed.

Going all the way to $180,000 removes the premium entirely, because at 20% down insurance is no longer required. That saves the whole $33,400 and the PST on it.

I am not telling you to delay a purchase to reach a band. In a market like Toronto, waiting a year to save $25,000 while prices move can easily cost more than the premium saves, and that is a judgement about your situation, not a rule. But if you are sitting at $62,000 and wondering whether the last stretch to $65,000 matters, or at $85,000 wondering about $90,000 — yes, band edges are worth knowing about, and that is a conversation worth having before you make an offer rather than after. The pre-approval page is where that normally starts.

Two other premium details worth knowing. At the same 90.01% to 95% band, a non-traditional down payment — borrowed funds rather than savings or a gift — attracts 4.50% rather than 4.00%. And for a qualified first-time buyer choosing a 30-year amortization, CMHC applies a premium surcharge of 0.20%, effective 1 August 2024. On the $835,000 example above, that surcharge is roughly $1,670 — modest, but it belongs in your budget rather than as a surprise on the commitment.

The $1.5 million cliff — and the outdated figure still circulating

Look at the last two rows of the first table again. At $1,499,000 the minimum down payment is $124,900. At $1,500,000 it is $300,000. One thousand dollars more on the price adds $175,100 to the cash you must produce, because insurance stops being available and the 20% rule takes over.

If you are shopping anywhere near that line, this is the most consequential number on the page. It is worth knowing before you write an offer, not while you are negotiating one.

The insured price cap is $1.5 million, raised from $1 million effective 15 December 2024 and given legal effect by regulation in 2025. That change meaningfully widened access to insured financing in Toronto, where a great many perfectly ordinary houses sit between those two numbers.

A warning, because this one catches careful readers. FCAC's own down payment page still contains prose stating that insurance is unavailable at $1 million or more — a sentence that is out of date and that contradicts the table on the same page. The $1 million figure also persists across a great deal of broker and realtor content written before the change and never revised. Do not plan around $1 million. The cap is $1.5 million. If a professional quotes you the old figure, that tells you something useful about how current the rest of their advice is.

Closing costs in Toronto: two land transfer taxes, two rebates

Toronto buyers pay both the Ontario provincial land transfer tax and the Toronto municipal land transfer tax on the same purchase. Buyers in the 905 — Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill — pay only the provincial tax. On a Toronto purchase this is one of the largest single closing costs, and it is not financeable.

There are two separate first-time buyer rebates, with two separate maximums. The Ontario provincial rebate is up to $4,000. The Toronto municipal rebate is up to $4,475. A qualifying Toronto first-time buyer can claim both. Each has its own eligibility rules, and they are similar but not identical — broadly, you must be at least 18, occupy the home as your principal residence within nine months, never have owned a home anywhere in the world, and your spouse must not have owned one while you were together. Both require Canadian citizenship or permanent residence, with the Toronto rebate allowing an application if you become one within 18 months of the transfer.

If you are buying a newly built home, the First-Time Home Buyers' GST Rebate may also apply — a maximum of $50,000. It provides full 100% GST relief on new homes valued up to $1,000,000, phases out linearly between $1 million and $1.5 million, and disappears at $1.5 million or above. A $1.25 million home, mid-phase-out, receives a 50% rebate to a maximum of $25,000. It applies where the agreement with the builder was signed on or after 27 May 2025 and before 2031, at least one buyer must use the home as their primary residence and be its first occupant, and the first-time buyer test is being 18 or over, a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and not having lived in a home owned by you or your spouse or common-law partner in the current calendar year or the four preceding years.

Beyond taxes: legal fees and disbursements, title insurance, a home inspection, a status certificate for a condominium, property tax and utility adjustments, and PST on your insurance premium if you are putting down less than 20%. Our first-time buyer page goes through the full closing cost list, and the purchase page covers the financing side.

A note on what the minimum does and does not tell you

The minimum down payment tells you whether a purchase is permitted. It does not tell you whether it is wise, and it does not tell you whether you qualify. Those are determined by your income, your credit, your other debt and the lender's ratio limits, all measured at the minimum qualifying rate on an uninsured mortgage — the greater of your contract rate plus 2% or 5.25%. Our stress test guide explains how that calculation works.

Plenty of people can produce the minimum down payment on a $900,000 Toronto house and cannot carry it at the qualifying rate. That is not a failure of saving; it is the arithmetic of the market. It is better to find that out from a pre-approval conversation than from a declined financing condition after an accepted offer. I compare more than thirty Canadian lenders on a single application, and ratio limits and income treatment vary enough between them that the answer genuinely differs — particularly for self-employed income or where part of the household earnings are variable. Call (647) 761-1646 if you want it checked properly.

Last reviewed October 2026. Minimum down payment tiers are per FCAC. Premium bands are per CMHC's published consumer cost page; the 0.20% first-time buyer 30-year surcharge is per CMHC's newsroom notice of 2024. The $1.5 million insured price cap took effect 15 December 2024 and was given regulatory effect in 2025. The 30-year amortization either/or test took effect 15 December 2024. Land transfer tax rebate maximums are per ontario.ca and toronto.ca. The GST rebate figures are per the Department of Finance announcement of May 2025. All dollar amounts in the tables are calculated from those published rates. Programme parameters and tax rules change — confirm before relying on any figure for a decision, and this page is not tax advice.