30-year mortgages seen helping small `sliver' of market

The federal government's decision to allow first-time buyers to take out mortgages with 30-year amortization periods on new builds will only affect “a sliver” of the country's highly priced housing market, according to analysts.

“It's not a needle-mover; it's not a game-changer,” Ryan Berlin, senior economist at Vancouver-based real estate firm Rennie, said in a phone interview. “The first-time homebuyer segment of the market is really small, and then the presale — the newhome segment of the market — is also small.”

The relaxation of mortgage rules — announced Thursday by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to ease the country's housing affordability problems — may increase the attainable purchase price for first-time buyers by roughly six per cent, according to estimates from Berlin and his colleagues. However, new homes are often relatively more expensive and are subject to a five per cent goods and services tax, which would offset most of the policy's benefit, he added.

Still, the policy stands to affect builders' approach to new construction, Berlin said.

“Certain developers may see the biggest impact in a positive way,” he said. If they're selling new homes geared toward firsttime buyers, such as smaller or transit-oriented units, firsttime buying “may be funnelled into those types of projects.”

First-time buyers make up less than half of transactions, with their share falling in favour of investors and move-up buyers, while insured mortgages — the kind covered by the new policy — have fallen to about 15 per cent of new activity, Bank of Montreal senior economist Robert Kavcic wrote in a note.

Buyer power could increase by about eight per cent, assuming a five per cent mortgage rate with a fixed down payment, in the relevant “sliver” of the market, Kavcic added.

“This could shift some incremental activity towards new builds among first-time buyers — until prices adjust — but the overall market impact should be limited,” he said. “And that's a good thing, as juicing demand is rarely the right prescription for a market already struggling with excess demand.”