Quick answer: Yes, and there is now a number on it. One of Canada’s mortgage default insurers has gone back through its own applications and re-run them, and found that roughly 44% of the insured applications using a 30-year amortization would not have qualified on a 25-year amortization. Close to 60% of applications use the 30-year. Put those together and about one in four insured buyers in Canada only got approved because of a rule that changed on December 15, 2024. The other half of that rule change — raising the insured price cap from $1 million to $1.5 million — got most of the news coverage and touches under 4% of applications nationally, and under 2% in Alberta. The cap made headlines. The amortization did the work.
Two rules changed. Only one of them mattered.
On December 15, 2024, the federal government did two things to insured mortgages. It raised the maximum purchase price for an insured mortgage from $1 million to $1.5 million, and it opened 30-year amortizations to every first-time buyer and every buyer of a newly built home. Before that, if you were putting less than 20% down, 25 years was the ceiling.
Guess which one got the coverage. The $1.5 million cap is a better story — it has a big number in it, it sounds like the government helping people buy expensive houses, and it gave everyone in Toronto and Vancouver something to argue about. The amortization change got a paragraph near the bottom.
Nearly two years of data later, we can see which one actually changed who gets a mortgage. It was not close.
How fast the 30-year amortization took over
Canada’s private mortgage insurers file quarterly portfolio disclosures with the regulator. They are public, they are dry, and almost nobody reads them. They also happen to contain a clean before-and-after of this policy change, because they break new business down by amortization at origination. I pulled every quarter from one of them and calculated the share.
| Quarter | Amortized over 25 years |
|---|---|
| 2024 Q3 (before the change) | Under 1% |
| 2025 Q1 (one quarter after) | 43% |
| 2026 Q2 (most recent) | 64% |
One quarter after the change, 43% of newly insured mortgages were amortized past 25 years. Today it is roughly two-thirds. For context, in a typical quarter before the change, this insurer wrote a handful of mortgages longer than 25 years out of nearly ten thousand — a rounding error. This was not a gradual shift in preference. It was a door opening.
Worth noting what this disclosure is and is not: more than 99% of the “individual insurance” in those filings is high-ratio business, meaning buyers with less than 20% down. This is the first-time-buyer market, near enough.
The popular take: “a 30-year amortization is just more debt”
The argument you hear: stretching to 30 years does not make housing more affordable, it just lets people borrow more and pay more interest. It props up prices, it papers over an affordability problem rather than solving it, and it proves buyers cannot really afford what they are buying. Some prominent brokers make a stronger version: the government changed the rules to keep the machine running, and first-time buyers are the ones holding the bag.
The interest-cost half of that is straightforwardly true, and I have written the full math on it elsewhere — see 25 vs 30-year amortization: what it actually costs, which works through a real file and shows how to erase the extra interest entirely by paying the 30-year like a 25-year. I am not going to pretend a longer loan is free.
But the “it just lets people borrow more” framing skips the question that matters to an actual buyer sitting across from me: did it change who gets approved at all? That is an empirical question, and until now nobody had published the answer.
The number that settles it
At a broker professional development event in Calgary in , one of Canada’s mortgage default insurers presented something its public filings do not contain. It took every application that used a 30-year amortization and re-ran it at 25 years to see how many would still have passed.
Nationally, close to 60% of its high-ratio applications since December 15, 2024 used a 30-year amortization. Of those, roughly 44% would not have qualified at 25 years. Alberta tracked the national picture almost exactly — a slightly lower share taking the 30-year, and essentially the same failure rate at 25. The Prairies came in lower on both counts.
Multiply those two together and you get the headline: about a quarter of all insured buyers, nationally and in Alberta, would have been declined if the amortization rule had not changed. Not “would have bought something smaller.” Declined.
Now hold that against the other half of the rule change. The $1.5 million cap — the part that got the press conference and the headlines — is relevant to fewer than 4% of insured applications in Canada and under 2% in Alberta. In the Prairies it is a fraction of a percent. One rule changed the outcome for a quarter of buyers. The other changed it for roughly one in seventy.
Why a 7% difference decides so many files
When I tell people the 30-year amortization is the difference between approved and declined for a quarter of buyers, the usual reaction is that the gap must be enormous. It is not. Here is the actual size of it.
You qualify at the stress-test rate, which is the greater of 5.25% or your contract rate plus two points. On today’s best insured five-year fixed of about 4.54%, that is a qualifying rate of 6.54%. At that rate, spreading the same payment over 30 years instead of 25 supports about 6.9% more mortgage.
| 25-year amortization | 30-year amortization | |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum mortgage | $570,300 | $609,600 |
| Extra borrowing power | — | +$39,300 |
| Actual monthly payment at 4.54% | $3,169 | $3,088 |
Read that bottom row twice. The 30-year buyer borrows $39,300 more at a payment that is $81 a month lower. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the shift was so abrupt.
Seven percent sounds like a rounding error until you understand how mortgage files cluster. Almost nobody buys at 70% of what they qualify for. People buy at the top of their range, because that is what the market hands them — the realtor prices the search to the pre-approval, and the pre-approval is the maximum. So a very large share of applications sit within a few percent of the ceiling, and a 7% shift in that ceiling moves an enormous number of files across the line. The insurer’s answer to “how many” is roughly 44%.
What this means if you are buying in Alberta
Three practical things.
If you were declined before December 2024, your file may be approvable now — and nobody will call to tell you. I still meet people who tried in 2023 or early 2024, got a no, and quietly shelved the idea. If you are a first-time buyer, the ceiling on your file moved roughly 7% higher, and for about two in five people in that position, that was the entire gap. It costs nothing to have it re-run.
Ignore the $1.5 million cap in an Alberta conversation. Calgary’s benchmark price in September 2026 was $566,700 and Greater Edmonton’s was $423,100. At under 2% of applications, the cap is a Toronto and Vancouver rule that happens to apply here. If someone is explaining what December 2024 did for Alberta buyers and they lead with the cap, they are reading a national press release, not the local market.
The 30-year is a floor on your payment, not a sentence. Taking the 30-year amortization to qualify does not commit you to 30 years of payments. Every insured lender I work with allows some combination of prepayment privileges and payment increases. Qualify on the 30, then pay it like a 25 once you are in. The buyers who get hurt by a longer amortization are the ones who never use the flexibility — and that is a decision made after closing, not at application.
Were you turned down for a mortgage before December 2024?
The rules that declined you have changed. A re-run takes about fifteen minutes and there is no cost to find out.
Honest limits on this data
I want to be straight about what these numbers can and cannot carry.
- This is one insurer, not the market. Canada has three mortgage default insurers, and this is the book of one of them. Its business skews more heavily to Alberta than the national insured market does, so its regional cuts are not national averages.
- The ~44% is the insurer’s own modelling of its own applications. It re-ran its files at 25 years; the underlying assumptions are not published. It is the best answer available to the question, and it is directionally corroborated by how violently the amortization mix shifted, but it is not an independent audit.
- “Would not have qualified” is not the same as “would not have bought.” Some of those buyers would have found a smaller property, a co-signer, or a larger down payment. The honest claim is that their file as submitted would have failed, not that they would have been shut out of housing forever.
- The insured market is not the whole mortgage market. None of this speaks to buyers with 20% or more down, who were never subject to the 25-year insured cap.
- Rates move. The 6.9% borrowing-power gap is computed at today’s stress rate. At a higher qualifying rate the gap widens slightly; at a lower one it narrows.
Frequently asked questions
Who can get a 30-year amortization on an insured mortgage in Canada?
Since December 15, 2024, first-time home buyers and buyers of newly built homes can use a 30-year amortization with less than 20% down. If you have 20% or more down, amortization length is a lender decision and 30 years has long been available.
How much more can I borrow with a 30-year amortization?
About 7% more, at today’s stress-test rate of roughly 6.54%. On the median Alberta insured household income of $129,000 with no other debt payments, that works out to roughly $39,000 of additional mortgage — at a monthly payment about $81 lower than the 25-year option.
Do most first-time buyers actually use the 30-year amortization?
Yes. It is now the default rather than the exception. One insurer’s public filings show roughly 64% of its newly insured mortgages amortized past 25 years in the second quarter of 2026, up from effectively zero before the rule changed. Alberta runs a few points below the national share.
Does a 30-year amortization cost more in interest?
Yes, if you run it the full 30 years at the same rate. The cost is real and it is worth understanding before you sign — but it is avoidable. Increase the payment to the 25-year equivalent once you are settled and you finish in 25 years having paid no extra interest. The full worked example is in 25 vs 30-year amortization.
Did raising the insured price cap to $1.5 million help Alberta buyers?
Barely. Under 2% of insured Alberta applications involve a purchase price over $1 million, and a fraction of a percent in the Prairies. With Calgary’s benchmark price at $566,700 and Greater Edmonton’s at $423,100, the cap is not the binding constraint here. It matters in Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria.
I was declined for a mortgage in 2023. Should I try again?
If you are a first-time buyer and the decline was about qualifying ratios rather than credit or down payment, yes. Your maximum moved roughly 7% higher on December 15, 2024, and the insurer data suggests about 44% of borrowers in that band were inside the gap. Nothing about a previous decline carries forward.
Is a 30-year amortization risky?
The insured data does not show a marginal-borrower problem. The average insured borrower carries a credit score around 800 — nationally and in Alberta alike — at roughly 92% loan-to-value. These are strong files that were bumping a payment ceiling, not weak files being waved through.
- Did the 30-year amortization actually help first-time buyers qualify? (you are here)
- Why Calgary and Edmonton are Canada’s two biggest cities for first-time buyer mortgages
- Is Alberta still affordable for first-time buyers?
This is commentary, not mortgage advice — every file is different and yours deserves an actual look. Rates, policy and market figures are as of and change without notice. Insurer figures are drawn from a Canadian mortgage default insurer’s public quarterly regulatory disclosures and from company data shared with mortgage brokers at a professional development event in September 2026. Josh Tagg is a licensed mortgage broker in Alberta.
