First Time Home Buyers in Markham: What You Need and What It Costs

Start with the word, because it means four different things

Before any of the numbers, deal with the vocabulary, because this is where first time buyers lose money they were entitled to.

There is no single federal or provincial definition of a first time home buyer. Each programme writes its own and they genuinely differ:

Programme	Who counts as a first time buyer
Ontario land transfer tax refund	You have never owned an eligible home (or an interest in one) anywhere in the world at any time. Your spouse must not have owned one while married to you
First Home Savings Account	You have not lived in a qualifying home you or your spouse owned in the year of opening or the four preceding calendar years
RRSP Home Buyers’ Plan	A four year lookback of the same shape, set by the Canada Revenue Agency
First time home buyers’ GST/HST rebate	You have not lived in a home you or your spouse owned, in or outside Canada, in the current calendar year or the previous four

Read that table twice if you owned property before. Someone who sold a condo six years ago is shut out of Ontario’s $4,000 refund permanently, while still qualifying for the FHSA, the Home Buyers’ Plan and the GST rebate. People assume one answer covers everything and leave money behind.

Ontario also requires that you be at least 18, that you be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, that you occupy the home as your principal residence within nine months of the transfer and that you apply within 18 months of registration.

What the down payment actually is on a Markham price

The federal minimums are set by price band, not by the buyer:

• 5 percent of the purchase price up to $500,000
• 10 percent of the portion between $500,000 and $1.5 million
• 20 percent once the price is $1.5 million or more

Markham’s median sale price in August 2026 was $1,095,000. Run that through the bands:

Price	Minimum down payment	How it breaks down
$663,000	$41,300	$25,000 plus 10 percent of $163,000
$736,500	$48,650	$25,000 plus 10 percent of $236,500
$1,095,000	$84,500	$25,000 plus 10 percent of $595,000
$1,500,000	$300,000	20 percent, no insured option

Under 20 percent down you will need mortgage default insurance. The premium is normally added to the mortgage rather than paid up front. Ontario charges provincial sales tax on that premium, which is due in cash on closing, so it belongs in your closing cost budget rather than your down payment budget. Our post on closing costs when you buy in Markham sets out the rest of them.

The insured mortgage cap, and why $1.5 million matters here

Until December 2024 the price cap for an insured mortgage was $1 million, which in this market would have forced 20 percent down on a large share of Markham. The Department of Finance raised it to $1.5 million effective December 15, 2024.

For a Markham first time buyer that is the difference between needing $84,500 and needing $219,000 on a median priced home. It is the single most useful rule change of the past few years for buyers in this city. Plenty of people still budget as though it had not happened.

The 30 year amortization, and the catch

The same set of reforms expanded 30 year amortizations on insured mortgages to all first time buyers and to all buyers of newly built homes, effective December 15, 2024. It applies where the loan to value is above 80 percent, which is to say where you are putting down less than 20 percent.

The catch is the obvious one and it is worth stating plainly. Stretching the amortization lowers the monthly payment and increases the total interest paid over the life of the loan. It buys you room in the monthly budget at a real long term cost. Whether that trade is worth making is a conversation for you and your mortgage broker, with the numbers in front of you.

Ontario land transfer tax and the $4,000 refund

Markham sits in York Region, so you pay the provincial land transfer tax and nothing else. Buyers inside the City of Toronto pay a second municipal land transfer tax of a similar size, which is one of the genuine financial arguments for buying here rather than in the city.

On a $1,095,000 purchase the Ontario tax is $18,375. An eligible first time buyer has up to $4,000 refunded, which your lawyer normally claims electronically when the transfer is registered, so it reduces what you bring to closing rather than arriving later as a cheque.

Purchase price	Ontario land transfer tax	After a full $4,000 refund
$663,000	$9,735	$5,735
$736,500	$11,205	$7,205
$1,095,000	$18,375	$14,375

A full breakdown of the brackets is in our post on land transfer tax in Markham.

The FHSA and the Home Buyers’ Plan, used together

These are the two savings tools. The most common mistake is treating them as alternatives. They are not. A first time buyer can use both for the same qualifying home.

The First Home Savings Account has a $40,000 lifetime contribution limit. Contributions are deductible and a qualifying withdrawal is never repaid, which makes it the stronger of the two for most people.

The RRSP Home Buyers’ Plan lets you withdraw up to $60,000 from your RRSPs. That is a loan to yourself and you repay it within 15 years, so it is more useful to someone who already has RRSP savings than to someone starting from nothing.

Both have timing rules that matter. Money generally has to sit in an RRSP for 90 days before it can be withdrawn under the Home Buyers’ Plan. FHSA contribution room only starts once the account is opened, which is a good reason to open one before you think you need it. Our post on the FHSA and the Home Buyers’ Plan goes through both in detail. Confirm your own position with the Canada Revenue Agency or an accountant.

The GST rebate, which only helps if you buy new

The first time home buyers’ GST/HST rebate covers 100 percent of the GST (or the federal part of the HST) on a qualifying new home valued up to $1 million. It reduces gradually for homes between $1 million and $1.5 million.

The word doing the work there is new. This applies to a home bought from a builder, not to a resale home. Most first time buyers in Markham buy resale, so for most readers of this page it is not relevant. If you are looking at pre-construction in Downtown Markham or one of the newer communities, it is worth a serious conversation with your lawyer, because the Canada Revenue Agency also sets conditions on when the agreement of purchase and sale was entered into with the builder and when construction starts and completes.

What a first time buyer can realistically buy here

Property type decides this more than neighbourhood does. TRREB’s community medians for January to March 2026, across all property types, give a useful picture:

Community	Median sale price, Q1 2026
Thornhill	$663,000
Unionville	$736,500
Cornell	$977,000
Greensborough	$980,100
Wismer	$1,048,000
Berczy Village	$1,232,000
Angus Glen	$1,349,000

Thornhill and Unionville look inexpensive on that table because both medians are pulled down by condo apartment sales rather than because detached homes are cheap there. That is the honest reading of the number. It is also the opportunity: the condo apartment and townhouse market is where most first time buyers in Markham actually start.

Our neighbourhood guides cover what each area is like. Cornell and Greensborough are worth reading if a townhouse is where you are headed.

The order to do things in

1. Open an FHSA, even with a small contribution, because the room starts accruing from the day the account exists.
2. Get a real pre-approval, not an online estimate. It tells you your actual budget and the rate hold protects you while you look.
3. Choose your lawyer early. They claim the land transfer tax refund and review the status certificate if you buy a condo.
4. Work out your closing costs separately from your down payment. Legal fees, title insurance, the sales tax on mortgage insurance and the land transfer tax after the refund.
5. Then start looking. Not before, because viewing homes you cannot finance is how people end up disappointed or overcommitted.

What we see go wrong

Budgeting the down payment and forgetting everything else. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada suggests being prepared to spend between 1.5 and 4 percent of the purchase price on closing costs. On a median Markham home that is thousands of dollars beyond the down payment.

Assuming one definition of first time buyer. Covered above. It is the most expensive assumption on this page.

Opening the FHSA at the offer stage. The room accrues from when the account is opened. Opening one years before you buy is the cheapest thing on this list.

Treating a pre-approval as a guarantee. It is a rate hold and an estimate. The lender still underwrites the specific property.

Skipping the condition on a condo. A status certificate tells your lawyer what the corporation’s finances actually look like. Our post on status certificates explains what they must contain and the deadline the corporation has to meet.

None of this is legal, tax or mortgage advice. The programmes here have real eligibility conditions and they change, so confirm yours with the Canada Revenue Agency, your lawyer and your mortgage professional before you commit. What we can do is tell you which of these apply to your situation and what the numbers look like on a specific Markham home, with no obligation attached. If you want to know what your budget buys here right now, that is a conversation worth having before you start viewing.