Joint Mortgages Among First-Time Buyers Hit 70.9% as Family Support Grows in Ontario and B.C.: Equifax

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Buying a first home in Canada is increasingly becoming a shared financial undertaking rather than a solo milestone. New Equifax Canada data show that 70.9% of first-time homebuyers had joint mortgages through the second quarter of 2026, up sharply from 57.6% in 2016. The change is especially striking in Ontario and British Columbia, where younger buyers are showing stronger signs of relying on older co-borrowers.

The trend arrives even as home prices have softened in several markets. High purchase prices, mortgage qualification requirements and years spent building a down payment continue to leave many first-time buyers searching for additional financial capacity. Increasingly, that capacity is coming from spouses, partners, parents and other relatives, reshaping what entering Canada’s housing market looks like.

A Decade-Long Shift Toward Buying Together

The move toward joint borrowing is not a small quarterly fluctuation. Equifax says the share of first-time buyers with joint mortgages climbed from 57.6% in 2016 to 70.9% through Q2 2026, an increase of more than 13 percentage points in roughly a decade. Put another way, more than seven in 10 first-time purchasers recorded in the latest data were buying with at least one other borrower attached to the mortgage.

Not every joint mortgage represents parental assistance. Couples purchasing together naturally account for a substantial portion of co-borrowing. Still, Equifax found another pattern among first-time buyers under 35: Ontario and British Columbia had roughly twice the proportion of joint mortgages involving borrowers separated by 20 years or more compared with the rest of Canada. Equifax interprets that age gap as evidence that parents or other older family members are playing a larger role, particularly where housing costs are high.

Ontario and B.C. Show Why Family Help Matters More

The geographic pattern becomes easier to understand when current home prices are considered. Ontario’s average resale home price was $797,486 in July 2026, according to CREA statistics, despite being 2.9% lower than a year earlier. British Columbia remained even more expensive, with BCREA reporting a provincial average MLS residential price of $929,619 for July.

The largest urban markets make the affordability challenge still clearer. The Greater Toronto Area recorded an average selling price of just over $1 million in July, while the Metro Vancouver benchmark price stood at $1,088,800. A Metro Vancouver apartment alone carried a benchmark price of $688,000. Falling prices therefore do not necessarily mean homes have become easy for young households to finance. A modest decline from an exceptionally high starting point can still leave the required mortgage far beyond what one early-career income can support. In that environment, adding a second or third qualified borrower can fundamentally change the calculation.

A Parent’s Signature Can Dramatically Change the Mortgage Math

Bank of Canada research provides a striking illustration of how much difference parental co-signing can make. Using anonymized mortgage and credit information, researchers estimated that parental co-signing among first-time buyers under 50 increased from 4% of mortgages in 2004 to roughly 11% in 2025. The practice was particularly common in expensive markets such as Toronto and Vancouver.

Among buyers with parent-co-signed mortgages examined by the researchers, 74% would not have qualified for their existing mortgage without parental support. For a group studied using fourth-quarter 2022 data, removing the parent would have left the typical maximum attainable home price at about $458,000. With the parent included, purchasing capacity increased to roughly $787,000, a difference of about 72%. Those buyers actually purchased homes averaging approximately $709,000. The numbers show why co-signing is powerful: assistance does not merely help assemble a down payment; another borrower’s income and credit profile can materially enlarge the mortgage for which a household qualifies.

Family Support Goes Far Beyond Joint Mortgages

Co-signing is only one part of the financial support families are providing. CMHC’s 2026 research found that 28% of first-time buyers needed a co-signer other than a spouse or partner. Among those respondents, 54% identified a parent as a co-signer, while other relatives, children, friends and business partners also appeared among the responses.

Down-payment assistance remains important as well. Twenty-seven per cent of first-time buyers reported receiving a financial gift, while the median gift among homebuyers who received one was $30,000. Buyers were also spending longer preparing for ownership: recent purchasers took an average of 4.4 years to save their down payment, while first-time buyers reported renting for an average of 7.6 years before purchasing. These figures help explain why family involvement can take several forms. One household may receive a cash gift, another may move in with relatives while saving, and another may need a parent directly attached to the mortgage before a lender will approve the purchase.

Joint Borrowing Also Creates Joint Responsibility

The benefit of a co-borrower comes with a significant obligation. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada states that someone who signs a mortgage as a joint borrower becomes equally responsible for repaying the unpaid balance. A parent’s role therefore does not end when the purchase closes. If the primary buyer runs into serious financial trouble, the co-borrower’s finances can become directly involved.

That exposure matters because many parents helping adult children are homeowners themselves. Bank of Canada research found that roughly one-third of parents co-signing first-time buyers’ mortgages already had mortgages of their own. Researchers also observed that borrowers who made the greatest use of the additional purchasing capacity created by parental support subsequently showed larger increases in delinquency on products such as credit cards and lines of credit. Families can reduce uncertainty by agreeing in advance on payment responsibilities, ownership shares, major repairs and what happens if someone wants to leave the arrangement. Ontario’s co-ownership guidance similarly recommends formal agreements and financial reserves for shared ownership situations.

The Wider Credit Picture Makes the Risk Harder to Ignore

The increase in joint mortgages is occurring against a much larger Canadian debt backdrop. Equifax reported total consumer debt of $2.68 trillion in Q2 2026, up 4.18% from a year earlier. Non-mortgage balances reached $712.2 billion. National indicators do not point to a broad household credit crisis, but Equifax identified meaningful pockets of pressure, particularly among Ontario homeowners.

For Ontario mortgage holders, the 90-plus-day delinquency rate on non-mortgage debt reached 0.86% in Q2, 27% higher than a year earlier. The Bank of Canada has also warned that a final group of pandemic-era five-year fixed mortgages still faces renewal. About 12% of outstanding mortgages are expected to fall into that category over the next year, with average payment increases of roughly 15%. Most borrowers are expected to manage those adjustments, but the figures illustrate why a family-backed mortgage should be evaluated as a long-term financial relationship rather than simply a way to clear the qualification hurdle on closing day.

Family Wealth Is Creating Different Starting Lines

Growing reliance on relatives raises another question: what happens to prospective homeowners who do not have family wealth available? Statistics Canada has already documented a substantial relationship between parents’ property ownership and their children’s chances of entering the housing market. Among Canadians born in the 1990s, the adult children of homeowners were twice as likely to own residential property in 2021 as the children of non-homeowners. The likelihood was even greater when parents owned multiple properties.

Separate Statistics Canada research found that 17.3% of residential properties owned by people born in the 1990s were co-owned with their parents in 2021, with higher rates appearing in expensive places including Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria. Broader financial data tell a similar story: about one-third of homeowners under 35 had received some form of family assistance specifically connected with entering the housing market in 2023. Family help can therefore accelerate ownership and subsequent wealth accumulation, while buyers without the same support may spend longer renting and saving even when their personal incomes are comparable.

Mortgage Reforms Help, but They Do Not Replace a Second Income

Ottawa has introduced several measures aimed at lowering barriers for first-time purchasers. Since December 2024, 30-year amortizations on insured mortgages have been available to all first-time homebuyers, and the price ceiling for insured mortgages has been increased from $1 million to $1.5 million. Eligible buyers can also use the First Home Savings Account, which allows up to $8,000 in annual contributions and $40,000 over a lifetime, alongside a Home Buyers’ Plan withdrawal limit of $60,000 from an RRSP.

Those programs can improve down-payment savings or lower required monthly payments, but mortgage qualification remains a separate obstacle. For uninsured mortgages, OSFI’s minimum qualifying rate continues to require most new borrowers at federally regulated lenders to demonstrate that they can handle the greater of their contract rate plus two percentage points or 5.25%. That helps protect borrowers and lenders against financial shocks, but it also means savings alone may not solve the affordability equation. Equifax’s 70.9% figure shows how Canadian families are increasingly filling that gap themselves—by combining incomes, credit profiles and, ultimately, financial risk.

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