Thinking of Upgrading Your Home? Read this First!
Are you thinking of replacing your windows, maybe a new hot water tank? Before you make your next renovation decision, you NEED to read this! You may be eligible for a one-time grant (money in your pocket) of up to $5,600.
Currently the Government of Canada is offering a program called The Greener Homes Program. If you are looking at doing any renovation that would improve your homes efficiency you need to look at this program, link details below.
My husband and I are currently navigating this process, and I sure would have loved having someone just like me to chat with about how the program works, what made it easier or harder, or any little tidbit I could use. To start things off, you need to look at the program BEFORE you start the home renovations, if you start them, you automatically become ineligible, so beware!
The Greener Homes Program basically has 4 big steps (with an optional 5).
- Get Pre-Renovation Inspection
- Get your Quotes, choose your Contractor(s)
- (this step is optional) Leverage the Canada Greener Homes Loan
- Get the Work Done
- Get Post-Renovation Inspection
We are currently on step 3 so you know exactly where we are at. So here are my thoughts so far. Sign up for the program is relatively easy, the program only applies to your principal residence, so you do have provide documentation of ownership and gov’t ID. Pretty straightforward. Once you get signed up, it opens the portal you which is laid out well in terms of next step etc.
So, first step, getting your pre-renovation inspection. The program actually provides you with a list of approved inspection contractors, just reach out to anyone on the list, let them know what you’re looking for. We did have to reach out to two before we got one scheduled. They came out with a week and did the inspection. After the inspection to open the next part of the portal is they must upload the inspection report which will then give you a list of available renovations specific to your home that would qualify for the grant. Keep in mind the grant is a one time only, so you can’t go through it twice. So, deciding what you are going to do from the list is important to maximize the grant money back in your pocket.
At this point, once decided you can just go ahead and get the renovations done. From my understanding you can actually get the grant if you decide to do DIY as well, you just must make sure the renovation follows what is outlined in the recommendations list. Or the other option is to take advantage of the Greener Homes Program Loan, this loan is interest free personal loan over 10 years. If you go this route with the loan, you will have to upload your contractor quotes (or DIY cost estimates), plus documents supported your income etc.
My husband and I are going to be replacing our windows, we have a staggering 40 windows in it…..of which 27 have not been replaced (our house was built in 1972). With 27 windows to replace we should get the maximum grant money back as long as the windows meet the energy star requirements recommended. That said to ease everyone’s mind, every one of our window contractors we had come out were well aware of the greener homes program and were able to meet the energy requirements without issue. We have also decided to go with the home loan, this process so far has been relatively painless and moving along nicely. Our longest part of the process was actually selecting a contractor for the work as we are also doing some renovations that are not part of the program so finding the right contractor for us has been the most important. Make sure when you get your quotes, that you at least have 3 come out, the price ranges between our window quotes were a difference of $10,000 between the highest and lowest.
Couple of points to consider for the program and/or the loan:
- The initial inspection and post inspection will need to be paid for you upfront to the inspector. Those costs are available for the grant, but you can not get that money until after the last inspector is done.
- I personally haven’t gotten to the grant being approved or money received, but after much researching my understanding is it could take up to 30 Business Days after your post inspection to actually get money in hand. So be prepared to fund your entire project up front with the grant money coming in later.
- Point # 2 applies if you are also using the greener homes loan as well. The load is split into 2 parts. They will advance fund you a deposit (from what I have seen though, it will likely not be your whole deposit amount as they will only give you up to 15% as a deposit). The 2nd part is funding the remainder of the loan. Again, you will need to front the cost of the whole renovation and the remaining funds only sent your way once the post-inspection is done. So be prepared for this.
- Timing wise, through all my research is appears that early when this program was first opened that there were a lot of delays between in each phase with the homeowner having to push every part forward through much follow up. I can tell you; I have not experienced this to date. Pre-Inspection took about 10 business days from me booking it to the report being uploaded to the portal. Our contractors took awhile but this was all us. The greener homes loan process has also been quick (and only is taking a bit longer because we initially decided to go with a different contractor and have changed), from submitting our request and documents to receiving the initial response was 1 week.
So, this is where we are at, and we will update you once our work gets done! If you have any questions, feel free to drop in a comment :)
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