Reverse mortgage blog

Home Trust EquityAccess: An Independent Broker Review (2026)

Richard Hopkins · Licensed Mortgage Broker M16000896

5.0

(240+ Google Reviews)

Updated July 26, 2026

General information for Canadian homeowners, not personal financial, legal, or tax advice. Rates and lender details verified as of July 26, 2026.

Home Trust EquityAccess is Canada’s newest reverse mortgage — broker-only, launched October 2025, with three tiers, a $995 set-up fee, a base rate among the market’s lowest, and a top tier that reaches up to 60% of home value for borrowers 70 and older.

Searching for an independent review of EquityAccess is the right instinct, because there is very little to find. The product is only months old, it is sold exclusively through mortgage brokers, and most of what has been written about it so far is either Home Trust’s own material or thin summaries with the numbers wrong. This review lays out the full picture: what EquityAccess actually is, how its three tiers really work — including the borrowing caps Home Trust does not advertise on its public page — what it costs, how it stacks up against CHIP, Equitable Bank’s Flex, and Bloom, and who it genuinely fits.

What is Home Trust EquityAccess?

EquityAccess is a suite of reverse mortgages from Home Trust, one of Canada’s largest alternative lenders — a company best known in mortgage circles for its Classic mortgage and Equityline Visa, and part of the same group as Fairstone Bank following their merger. Launched on October 20, 2025 at the National Mortgage Conference in Ottawa, it made Home Trust the fourth — and newest — reverse mortgage lender in Canada, after HomeEquity Bank (1986), Equitable Bank (2018), and Bloom (2021).

The fundamentals work like every Canadian reverse mortgage. Homeowners 55 and older borrow against their home without selling it and without taking on a monthly payment: there are no required monthly mortgage payments, interest is added to the balance instead, and the loan is repaid when the home is sold, when the last borrower permanently moves out, or after the last borrower passes away. The money is a loan rather than income, so it is tax-free and does not affect Old Age Security or the Guaranteed Income Supplement. Property taxes, home insurance, and reasonable upkeep remain the homeowner’s responsibility, the same as with any mortgage — and the No Negative Equity Guarantee means neither you nor your estate ever repays more than the home’s fair market value at the time the mortgage becomes due, as long as those obligations are met.

Two things set EquityAccess apart from the pack. First, it is broker-exclusive: Home Trust built its whole business alongside mortgage brokers and sells this product only through them — there is no number a homeowner can call to buy it directly. Second, it is built as three separate tiers with three different borrowing caps, from a simple lump sum capped around 40% of home value up to a top tier advertising 60% for borrowers 70 and older. That tiered design is unusual, and it means the tier you qualify for matters as much as the lender you choose.

The rollout has been deliberate. Home Trust ran a pilot in Ontario for several months with roughly a dozen to fifteen brokers across multiple brokerages before launching, and the product is now available in seven provinces — Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador — with a national rollout planned. Homes must be owner-occupied and worth at least $250,000.

How do the three EquityAccess tiers work?

This is the part no other review spells out, and it is the single most important thing to understand about the product. “Up to 60%” is the headline — but that number belongs to one tier only, and the tier you actually land in changes your maximum by tens of thousands of dollars. The top tier is reserved for borrowers 70 and older; what a homeowner can actually access at each age, across every lender, is broken down in how much you can get from a reverse mortgage by age.

Three practical readings of that table, per Home Trust’s broker-channel product guidelines:

The basic tier is capped well below the market norm. Plain EquityAccess — the simple one-lump-sum version — tops out around 40% of home value. That is meaningfully below the roughly 55% ceiling that CHIP, Flex, and Bloom advertise on their standard products. A 68-year-old with an $800,000 home who needs $350,000 does not fit the basic tier’s math and would need EquityAccess+ — a distinction Home Trust’s public page never explains.

The 60% is for borrowers 70 and older, and it costs more. EquityAccess Boost is the tier behind the 60% headline, and it requires every borrower to be at least 70 — and it carries a much higher interest rate than the base product (more on that below). A 62-year-old shopping on that 60% number will not get it. At 55 to 69, EquityAccess caps out around the same 55% as everyone else, and usually well below it, because age drives the actual percentage within every lender’s ceiling.

The flexible tier is where most real files land. EquityAccess+ allows a lump sum plus scheduled advances — minimums of $500 monthly, $1,500 quarterly, $3,000 semi-annually, or $6,000 annually — or as-needed advances of $5,000 or more, which carry a fee per advance. That structure suits the most common real-world use of a reverse mortgage: clear an existing mortgage first, then draw a steady monthly amount as income.

Like every reverse mortgage in Canada, where you land inside those ceilings depends on age first, then the home’s type, value, and location. The ceilings are the best case, not the promise.

What does EquityAccess cost?

Home Trust’s advertised set-up fee is $995, deducted from the initial advance. It reads as one of the lowest in the market — but it is a set-up fee only, and that is where advertised numbers mislead. With a $995-style product, the homeowner still hires two lawyers: one to handle the closing on the lender’s side, and their own lawyer for the required independent legal advice. Another lender might instead fold its closing legal work into a higher set-up fee — closer to $1,795 — so the client hires only the one independent lawyer. Add an appraisal, paid to an outside appraiser, and independent legal advice that in Ontario runs $800 to $1,200 in the real world, and the all-in cost of a $995 product lands much closer to a $1,795 one than the sticker gap suggests. Almost all of it can be rolled into the mortgage.

On rate, the tier you choose matters as much as the lender. Here is where EquityAccess sits as of July 2026:

Two things stand out. The base EquityAccess rate — 6.23% on the 5-year fixed as of July 2026, down from 6.44% at launch — is among the sharpest posted reverse mortgage rates in Canada, and by the late-June 2026 round of cuts every lender had trimmed within weeks of the others. But the top-tier Boost is not priced like the base product: at 7.44% on the 5-year fixed it costs well over a full percentage point more. The higher ceiling is real, and so is the higher rate that buys it — which is the whole reason how much you can borrow and what it will cost have to be answered together, on your actual file rather than off a headline.

One more caution belongs beside any rate table: the posted rate is the retail price, not the final one. On a real file, pricing depends on age, property, tier, and term — and the sharpest rates are frequently not the posted ones at all, a point worth its own section below.

How does EquityAccess compare with CHIP, Flex, and Bloom?

Here is the four-lender board as it stands, using advertised figures and posted rates — with the usual caveat that advertised fees do not all include the same things, and real pricing is set file by file. The biggest column on this board has its own deep dive in the independent CHIP review.

Read as a whole, the board says something simple: on paper, EquityAccess is immediately competitive. It matches the lowest base posted rate and advertises a set-up fee among the lowest. For a product that is months old, that is a deliberately aggressive opening position. Notice, too, what the top row does not say: Home Trust is not alone at the top of the market. HomeEquity Bank reaches 59% through CHIP Max and Equitable Bank reaches 59% through Flex Plus (for borrowers 70 and older), just behind Boost’s advertised 60% — and like Boost, those higher-lending tiers all come at noticeably higher rates than the base products above. The extra equity has the same price everywhere: a higher rate on the whole balance.

But the on-paper board is exactly where lender shopping goes wrong, for two structural reasons. First, the advertised-fee row is a known trap — a $995 set-up fee covers setup only, while a $1,795 one can already include the lender’s own closing legal work, so on a real closing statement the columns land far closer together than they look here. And the sticker is only a starting point: on a file that lenders actually want to compete for, a broker can often get a set-up fee reduced or waived outright — while a maxed-out or marginal file earns no such discount. The lowest advertised number is rarely the lowest number a borrower ends up paying. Second, the same two people can get meaningfully different maximum amounts from each of the four lenders — some price a couple on the youngest spouse’s age, others use a combined calculation, and each lender treats property types and locations differently. The winner on a real file changes with the file, which is why both the complete guide to reverse mortgages in Ontario and the full comparison of the best reverse mortgage companies in Canada — all four lenders side by side, on rates, fees, and where their penalties differ — pair every comparison with the same advice: get the numbers run on your actual age and home, dated the week you apply.

Why the posted rate isn’t the real story

There is a part no rate table shows, and it is the part that matters most. The sharpest reverse mortgage rates are usually not the posted ones. Lenders keep unpublished “whisper” rate specials for the brokers who bring them steady business, and apply them quietly on a real file — a discount you will never see on a lender’s own calculator. Set-up fees get negotiated down on competitive deals. And in the right situation, with a clear exit strategy for it, a reverse mortgage can even be paired with a second loan to reach past a single lender’s ceiling — the kind of structuring that only makes sense with a plan behind it.

How a lender actually treats a borrower at renewal — the difference between a fair reset and a painful one — is something you learn from placing these mortgages, not from a brochure. A homeowner phoning lenders directly sees none of this: EquityAccess has no public line at all, CHIP’s highest tier lives in the broker channel too, and every posted rate on every calculator is the retail price, not the broker price. So the question worth asking is not “what’s your best rate” — that treats a reverse mortgage like a commodity, and it isn’t one. The better question is which lender fits your age, your home, and your plan, and who can actually get you their best terms. Comparing every reverse mortgage lender in Canada — and knowing which one bends where — is exactly the job.

What should you watch out for?

A fair review of a months-old financial product has to include the real cautions — and with EquityAccess, most of them come down to matching the product to the plan.

Match the exit terms to your timeline. Every reverse mortgage carries an early-repayment penalty in the first years — usually waived on death and reduced for a move into long-term care — and lenders build that penalty in genuinely different ways, so the cost of an early exit can vary a lot depending on which lender holds the mortgage. If there’s any chance of selling or moving in the first few years, that is a conversation to have up front, not a reason to rule a reverse mortgage out: one lender offers an open product built for exactly that situation, and another’s penalty structure is far gentler. Lining the right product up with your timeline is exactly the kind of thing to sort out before signing — because an early exit is where reverse mortgages can sting when the product wasn’t built for it.

There is no renewal track record yet. A reverse mortgage term ends in a rate reset, and lenders differ on how they treat borrowers at that moment. Home Trust’s first EquityAccess renewals will not arrive until roughly 2028. The established lenders can be judged on years of renewal behaviour — the newest entrant cannot, yet.

The basic tier’s ceiling surprises people. As covered above, plain EquityAccess caps around 40% of home value — below the market’s standard 55%. A borrower who needs the higher amount needs the right tier from day one, and under 70, the 60% headline does not apply at all.

As-needed advances carry a fee. Ad-hoc draws on EquityAccess+ have a $5,000 minimum and a per-advance fee. Anyone planning frequent small draws should price that pattern carefully against alternatives before choosing it.

The book is still small. Bloom and Home Trust combined hold under 2.5% of Canada’s reverse mortgage balances — the market data lives in the reverse mortgage statistics for Canada hub. A small book is not a safety concern in itself: Home Trust is federally regulated, the No Negative Equity Guarantee applies, independent legal advice is still mandatory, and the contract’s protections do not depend on the lender’s size. What a small, new book does mean is fewer precedents — on renewals, on estate handling, on hardship flexibility — and precedents are half of what makes a lender predictable.

None of this is disqualifying. It is the ordinary caution list for being early to a well-built product — and the compound-interest math that governs every reverse mortgage applies here identically:

This calculator is for illustration only. Your real numbers depend on your age, lender, tier, rate, and home value — which is exactly what a free estimate works out for you.

Who is EquityAccess right for — and who should skip it?

It is worth a serious look for:

• Borrowers 70 and older who need the maximum. Boost advertises the market’s top tier, up to 60%. For an older homeowner whose file needs every available dollar — often to clear an existing mortgage and still fund the plan — that ceiling can be the difference between a plan that works and one that falls short, provided the higher Boost rate still makes sense for the goal.
• Rate-shoppers on the base product. EquityAccess opens at the market’s lowest posted 5-year fixed, and its advertised set-up fee is among the lowest — though that fee is setup only, and on a competitive file a broker can often trim any lender’s fee, so the right comparison is all-in, not stickers.
• Homeowners already working with a broker. Since the product only exists in the broker channel, it costs nothing extra to have it quoted alongside the other three.

It is probably the wrong first choice for:

• Anyone under 70 shopping on the 60% number. It does not apply below age 70 — and at 55 to 69 the effective ceilings sit at or below what the established lenders offer.
• Borrowers who want a long track record. EquityAccess is new, and its first renewals are still a couple of years out — so someone who wants years of proven renewal behaviour behind their lender may prefer one of the established three. That is about the product’s age, not its quality.
• Homes outside the seven covered provinces, or worth under $250,000. Home Trust currently lends in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador — outside that footprint, or under the value floor, these files are simply excluded for now.

The bottom line: EquityAccess’s arrival is unambiguously good for borrowers — a fourth regulated lender bidding down rates and fees — and it is already the right answer for some files, especially older borrowers who need the market’s top tier. But “newest and sharpest-priced” and “right for you” are different questions, and the second one is decided by your age, your home, and your plan, not by any lender’s brochure.

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How do you actually get EquityAccess?

There is exactly one road: a licensed mortgage broker submits the application, Home Trust underwrites it, an appraisal confirms the home’s value, and — like every reverse mortgage in Canada — you meet privately with your own lawyer for independent legal advice before anything closes. The set-up fee comes off the initial advance, so there is rarely much to pay out of pocket.

The more useful question is whether EquityAccess is even the right file to submit — and that is a comparison question, not an application question. Comparing every reverse mortgage lender in Canada puts EquityAccess’s real quote beside CHIP’s, Flex’s, and Bloom’s for your exact age and home — whisper rates, negotiated fees, tier for tier — and lets the numbers pick the winner. That is exactly what a free estimate starts:

Where does Home Trust fit in Canada’s reverse mortgage market?

Home Trust is not entering quietly. Its executives describe the launch as a long-term demographic play — the 70-plus cohort growing 45% over the next decade, and a Canadian market that could grow toward the UK’s scale — and the company built EquityAccess as the retiree-facing end of a product shelf that already runs from first-time buyers to commercial lending. For borrowers, the practical meaning is competition: within nine months of the launch, all four lenders had cut rates within weeks of each other, and the newcomer was setting the pace at the bottom of the base-rate table. The full sourced picture — market size, growth, lender shares, and how Canada compares abroad — lives in the reverse mortgage statistics for Canada hub, re-verified every quarter.

Frequently asked questions

About the author

Richard Hopkins

Licensed Mortgage Broker · M16000896

Richard has worked in the mortgage business since 2013 — first as a mortgage agent, today a licensed mortgage broker — and leads the reverse mortgage practice at Homestead Financial — Dominion Lending Centres, an FSRA-licensed Ontario brokerage (#11711) with roots in the industry since 1999 and more than 2,500 mortgages funded. More about Richard →

This article is general information for Canadian homeowners, not personal financial, legal, or tax advice. Everyone's situation is different — please get advice on your own numbers before making a decision. Rates and lender details verified as of July 26, 2026.