Straight answer up front: this program closed to new applicants on March 30, 2025. Here is who is still covered, and what to use instead.
Written by Serge, Founder, Kelowna Carriage Homes
This program is closed. The BC Secondary Suite Incentive Program stopped accepting new applications on March 30, 2025. If you have not already applied, this money is not available to you, and any page or ad claiming otherwise is out of date.
The BC Secondary Suite Incentive Program offered a forgivable loan covering 50% of eligible construction costs, up to a maximum of $40,000, to homeowners adding a secondary suite to an existing house. “Forgivable” meant the loan was written off over time provided the owner kept the suite rented at rates within the program’s affordability requirements, rather than paid back in cash. It applied to secondary suites specifically; carriage homes, being detached structures, were generally treated differently under the program’s rules even while it was open.
The program launched as part of the province’s response to the rental housing shortage and ran for a limited period before demand and funding constraints led to its closure.
BC Housing stopped accepting new applications on March 30, 2025. That date is confirmed on BC Housing’s own program update announcement and on the secondary suite program page, which now reflects the closed status.
If you submitted a complete application and received approval before that date, your approval is still honoured under the terms you were given; BC Housing has not clawed back or cancelled existing commitments. If you had started gathering documents but had not yet submitted a complete, approved application by March 30, 2025, you do not qualify, regardless of how far along your planning was. There is no waitlist or reopening date published as of this writing.
In December 2024, the federal government announced a companion program: an $80,000 secondary-suite loan at 2% interest over a 15-year term. It generated a fair amount of coverage at the time, and some sites still describe it as available. It is not. Budget 2025 confirmed the loan was cancelled before implementation, citing overlap with changes already made to CMHC mortgage insurance rules covered below. No applications were ever opened for this program, so there is no grandfathering question here — it simply did not happen.
The option that actually moved forward, and the one most owners now use, is a CMHC-insured mortgage refinance aimed specifically at funding a secondary suite. Since January 15, 2025, homeowners can refinance up to 90% of their home’s value, to a property value cap of $2,000,000, for a home with up to four units total, amortized over up to 30 years. Full terms are on CMHC’s mortgage loan insurance refinance page.
Two conditions matter. First, the funds have to go toward adding a secondary suite (or, in most cases, the kind of self-contained additional unit a carriage home represents) to an existing home, not general renovations. Second, the suite cannot be operated as a short-term rental under this program; a minimum 90-day rental term applies, which rules out nightly or weekly platforms for that unit.
Because this is a refinance of an insured mortgage rather than a grant, there is no dollar cap like the old $40,000 figure and no forgiveness; you are borrowing against equity you already have, at a mortgage rate rather than a HELOC rate, which is usually the cheaper way to fund $350,000 to $550,000 of construction.
If a refinance is not the right fit — your existing mortgage rate is well below current rates and you do not want to touch it, for example — a home equity line of credit is the common alternative. Canada’s prime rate sits at 4.45% as of September 2026; a typical HELOC prices at prime plus 0.5%, around 4.95%. It costs more than the insured-refinance rate but does not require breaking or renewing your existing first mortgage.
One smaller incentive is still active: a CleanBC rebate of up to roughly $5,500 for a ductless heat pump installed during a secondary suite or carriage home build, through BetterHomesBC. It stacks with a BC Hydro rebate of up to $2,000 for the same equipment. It will not move the needle on a $400,000 project the way the old grant would have, but it is real money that is still on the table and often missed. The financing options comparison lays out refinance, HELOC, and construction-mortgage paths against each other in more detail.
There is no longer a grant that hands back $40,000 for building a secondary suite in BC. If you already have an approval, it stands; if you do not, plan around the CMHC refinance option or a HELOC instead, and treat the CleanBC heat pump rebate as a smaller bonus rather than the centerpiece of your budget. We would rather tell you this plainly than let you plan a budget around money that is not there. Full current numbers for the build itself are in the complete carriage home guide.
The BC Secondary Suite Incentive Program was introduced as a pilot aimed at getting more legal rental suites built quickly, at a time when the province was under pressure to add rental supply fast. It ran as a limited pilot rather than an open-ended program from the outset, which is part of why its closure in March 2025 caught some homeowners mid-plan: there was no long advance notice window before applications stopped.
That pattern is worth remembering for any incentive program, not just this one. Provincial and federal housing incentives tend to run in waves tied to budget cycles, and a program that is open today is not guaranteed to still be open by the time your design is finished. Where possible, we recommend confirming the status of any incentive directly with the issuing agency at the point you are ready to apply, not months earlier when you first hear about it.
If your project math assumed $40,000 that is no longer coming, the numbers still work for most owners once you account for the CMHC refinance option instead of a grant. The difference is that a refinance is borrowed money, not free money, so it changes your monthly carrying cost rather than your total budget. Run the comparison with your own numbers in the ROI calculator guide before assuming the project no longer pencils out.
“This costs too much without the grant.” Most owners fund construction through the CMHC refinance or a HELOC, and rent typically covers some or all of the monthly payment once the unit is occupied. The math changes; it does not necessarily get worse, since a refinance at mortgage rates is often cheaper over time than a HELOC would have been anyway.
If you are still deciding whether to proceed at all, start with a free feasibility study. It costs nothing, and it tells you the real cost range and expected rent for your specific lot before you decide how to finance it.
If you applied before March 30, 2025 and are not sure whether you were approved, the fastest path is BC Housing directly, not a search engine: use the contact details on the secondary suite program page and reference your application number. We are not able to look up your application status on your behalf, since we are not affiliated with BC Housing; our role starts once you know what funding you have and want to build.
If you were approved and the forgivable-loan terms still apply to your project, that funding stacks fine with our fixed-price construction contract. Bring your approval documentation to the feasibility study conversation so the project scope lines up with what BC Housing has already approved.
Because this program launched with a fair amount of press coverage, a lot of articles, forum posts, and even some contractor websites still describe it as open, sometimes with the original $40,000 figure quoted as current. If a source does not mention the March 30, 2025 closure date, treat the rest of its financing information as potentially outdated too, and confirm current numbers directly against BC Housing and CMHC’s own pages, both linked above, before making a decision.
Written reply in 1 business day · No obligation
Costs, timelines, rents, and incentive amounts on this page are estimates from the sources cited, current as of September 2026. Each is confirmed in writing in your free feasibility study. Licensed and insured; documentation available on request.