The federal government is looking for new ways to help millennials get into the housing market, the finance minister said this week.
Bill Morneau told a business audience just outside Toronto that one of the planks of his upcoming budget will be assistance for younger buyers looking to get into the market, according to a Canadian Press report .
“The middle part – the big middle part – is the affordable housing for millennials,” Morneau said in the speech. “That’s a real challenge and there’s multiple things we’re looking at in order to think about how we can help in that regard.”
While he emphasized the possible coming measures, he didn’t elaborate on what they might be.
In the party’s platform, the Liberal Party had indicated they would expand the Home Buyers’ Plan, but haven’t taken any action on that front. The HBP allows first-time buyers to use up to $ 25,000 of their RRSPs towards a home purchase. Only about half of millennials know RRSP savings can be used for a home purchase a recent poll suggests, according to another CP report .
The comments came in the middle of a speech were the minister also touted the government’s other housing initiatives to cool the housing market and improve the supply, the CP report said.
At the same time this week, the big banks cut their five-year lending rate for fixed-rate mortgages.
Royal Bank of Canada was the first to cut the rate by 15 basis points to 3.74% from 3.89%. Toronto-Dominion and the Bank of Montreal soon followed.