Planted North

Tools · FHSA down payment planner

How big could your first-home down payment be?

The FHSA gives you a tax deduction going in and tax-free money coming out. Add the Home Buyers' Plan from your RRSP, and see what you could have by the year you want to buy.

Beta2026 rulesYour numbers stay on your deviceAn estimate, not advice

Your plan

The result updates as you type.

Room only starts building once you open one, so opening one early helps even if you put in $0 for now.

$

Up to $8,000 a year, $40,000 in total. $667 a month fills a year.

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For the Home Buyers' Plan. Up to $60,000 each. Use 0 if you have none.

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Only used to estimate the tax refunds.

Who's buying

Each first-time buyer gets their own FHSA and their own $60,000 Home Buyers' Plan limit.

Yearly return

A home fund needed in a few years usually can't wait out a bad market. Steadier often beats higher here.

Your down payment could be
about $0

Covers a home up to
$0
Tax refunds on the way
$0
To pay back later
$0
Where the money comes from
Show it year by year

Contributions at the start of each year and a constant return, added once a year, the same method as CRA's own FHSA estimator. Your RRSP savings grow at the same return until you buy. Tax refunds assume the same income every year and are not added to the down payment. Real returns move up and down and are never guaranteed.

Why the FHSA comes first for a first home

It is the only account that gives you both halves of the deal. Contributions are deducted from your income, like an RRSP. Withdrawals for a qualifying first home are tax-free, like a TFSA, and you never pay them back.

The Home Buyers' Plan is different. It lends you your own RRSP money, tax-free, but you repay it over 15 years. If a year's repayment is missed, that amount is added to your taxable income.

Five rules worth knowing before you start

  • Room starts when you open the account. $8,000 a year, and if you skip a year, up to $8,000 carries forward. Opening one now with $0 still starts the clock on your room.
  • $40,000 lifetime, 15 years maximum. The FHSA has to close by the end of the year of its 15th anniversary, at age 71, or the year after your first home withdrawal, whichever comes first.
  • Not buying after all? The money can move to your RRSP tax-free, without using your RRSP room.
  • First-time buyer means you haven't lived in a home you or your spouse owned in the current year or the four years before.
  • Both can go to the same home. CRA allows an FHSA withdrawal and a Home Buyers' Plan withdrawal for the same purchase, if you meet the conditions for each.
Your move · 15 minutes

Start the clock this week

  1. If you might buy a first home in the next 15 years, open an FHSA, even with $0 in it. Room only builds once it is open.
  2. Set an automatic transfer: $667 a month fills a year's $8,000.
  3. Decide now where the yearly tax refund goes: back into the FHSA, or into your TFSA.
Go deeperTool: TFSA or RRSP?Tool: RRSP refund estimatorQuiz: which account first?GlossaryAll tools
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Sources and method

Where this comes from

  • CRA: participating in your FHSAs: $8,000 of room in the year you open, carryforward of at most $8,000, $40,000 limit.
  • CRA: FHSA definitions: maximum participation period, first-time home buyer, qualifying withdrawal.
  • CRA: FHSA withdrawals: using the FHSA and the Home Buyers' Plan for the same home.
  • CRA: repaying the Home Buyers' Plan: 15 years; repayments start the second year after the withdrawal (the five-year start applied only to first withdrawals from 2022 to 2025). $60,000 limit per person.
  • Financial Consumer Agency of Canada: down payments: 5% of the first $500,000, 10% from $500,000 to $1.5 million, 20% at $1.5 million or more.
  • Tax refunds use the same 2026 brackets as the RRSP refund estimator. Room before 2026, for an account opened earlier, is estimated from what you've put in so far. Your exact room is in CRA My Account.
  • Checked against CRA's FHSA estimators (October 2026). Down payment: $8,000 a year for 4 years at 4% gives $35,330 in CRA's tool and $35,331 here (rounding). Tax saved, British Columbia: at $90,000 of income, $2,256 a year here, the top of CRA's range. At $65,000, CRA shows less federal tax saved ($1,120 against $1,541 here) because it applies one bracket's rate to the whole deduction, while most of that $8,000 comes off income taxed at 20.5%.
  • Not included: closing costs (land transfer tax, legal fees), the first-time buyer rebates some provinces offer, and mortgage qualification. The calculation is Planted North's own.