Your first home in Kitchener-Waterloo, without the guesswork.

The minimum in Canada is 5% on the first $500,000 and 10% on the portion above that, up to a $1.5 million purchase price. So on a $600,000 home, that's $25,000 plus $10,000, or $35,000. Anything under 20% down means you'll pay mortgage default insurance (CMHC), which gets added to your mortgage.

The down payment isn't the whole story. You also need money for closing costs on top of it. The closing costs question below breaks those down.

The First Home Savings Account lets you put in up to $8,000 a year, $40,000 lifetime. Contributions are tax-deductible like an RRSP, and withdrawals for a first home are tax-free like a TFSA. It is the best deal the government offers first-time buyers.

If you're more than a year away from buying, open one now even if you can only put in a little. Unused room carries forward (up to $8,000 of it), so opening the account early is what unlocks it.

Budget roughly 1.5% to 3% of the purchase price. The big pieces are Ontario land transfer tax (first-time buyers get a rebate of up to $4,000), your lawyer, title insurance, and adjustments for things like property tax the seller already paid. There's no municipal land transfer tax here, unlike Toronto, which helps.

Let's say you buy at $650,000. A realistic closing budget is around $10,000 to $15,000 on top of the down payment.

Resale homes have no HST. New builds do, but builders in KW now advertise their prices with the full HST rebate already taken off. So the price you see is the price you pay, as long as you qualify for the rebate and assign it to the builder at closing. If you don't qualify, the rebate amount gets added back on.

Before you get attached to a pre-construction home, confirm your eligibility. The HST rebate calculator walks through it.

Yes, and ideally before the first showing. A pre-approval tells you your real ceiling, locks a rate for a window of time, and makes your offer credible when there are other buyers. Kevin works with mortgage brokers who specialize in first-time buyers and can connect you.

In most purchases, the buyer's agent is paid through the listing side, so it usually costs you nothing out of pocket. How that works is spelled out in writing before you start looking. No surprises.