Rates guide

Reverse Mortgage Rates in Canada (2026)

Richard Hopkins · Licensed Mortgage Broker M16000896

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(240+ Google Reviews)

Updated August 23, 2026

General information for Canadian homeowners, not personal financial, legal, or tax advice. Rates and lender details verified as of July 20, 2026.

Reverse mortgage rates in Canada currently run from 6.23% to 6.39% for a posted 5-year fixed term — roughly two points above regular mortgage rates, because years of no-payment patience are priced in.

Most homeowners looking into a reverse mortgage want the rate first, and that is the right place to start. It is the number every lender advertises, and the number every comparison gets built on.

The difficulty is that the rate is only part of what one of these mortgages costs. Four other numbers move the total: the cost of setting the mortgage up, the price of money taken later, the new rate when a term ends, and the charge for paying it off early. Each one differs from lender to lender, and any one of them can outweigh a small difference in the advertised rate.

This page lists today’s posted rates at all four Canadian lenders, shows what those rates have done since 2022, and explains how lenders set them, which other costs decide the real total, and when the lowest advertised rate is not the cheapest mortgage.

What are reverse mortgage rates in Canada right now?

All four Canadian reverse mortgage lenders cut their posted rates within weeks of each other in late June 2026, as reported by Canadian Mortgage Trends.

Here is where the posted 5-year fixed — the benchmark term most borrowers compare — landed.

The cuts were not limited to the 5-year term. Shorter fixed terms and adjustable-rate products came down in the same round.

For the context underneath those numbers: the Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25% on July 15, 2026. That keeps prime at 4.45% and the broader rate environment steady.

Why two lenders posting the same rate can offer you different deals

Two cautions belong beside any rate table, and they apply to every number on this page.

The first: posted rates move often. Treat these as a dated snapshot, verified July 20, 2026 — not a live feed, and not a promise.

The second: the posted rate is the retail price, not the final one. Real pricing depends on age, property, product, and term. That’s why two lenders posting the same number can hand the same homeowner two different offers.

The independent CHIP review shows that gap inside a single lender’s own published tables — a new-client special sitting beside a separate, higher posted schedule. CHIP’s rates in full lays out both schedules across every CHIP product.

CHIP also usually sits at the top of the four on rate, which is the drawback raised most often about it. The downsides of a CHIP reverse mortgage puts that in context.

Both cautions come back later on this page, because they change how the comparison should be done.

How have reverse mortgage rates changed since 2019?

Today’s numbers deserve the longer view, because the last seven years hold the whole lesson about what these rates can do.

The chart below follows one benchmark through time: the advertised 5-year fixed rate on the CHIP Reverse Mortgage from HomeEquity Bank, the market’s oldest and largest lender. Every point is a date the bank published that rate publicly. Hover any point to see the date and the rate.

It’s one lender’s history, not the market’s. The rest of the market rode the same wave up — and, as the late-June cuts above show, the same wave down.

What seven years actually did

The rate sat at 5.74% in the summer of 2019, then drifted down through that autumn.

March 2020 pushed it briefly the wrong way, to 5.79%, as lenders everywhere pulled their discounts. Then it fell hard: 4.79% by that August and 4.59% by October 2020, the lowest point in this whole record.

It held near there into early 2021, stepped up to 5.14% that spring, and stayed there through the autumn.

Then came the climb. By April 2022 the rate was 6.99%, and by that July, 7.99%. It wobbled down to 6.89% in April 2023 — and three months later, on July 18, 2023, it hit 8.24%, the highest point in this record. That’s a jump of 1.35 points in a single quarter.

From there it eased. Back to 6.99% by January 2024, down to 6.69% that August, 6.64% through 2025, and 6.39% today. The 2019 rate and today’s rate are only about two-thirds of a point apart — but the road between them ran from 4.59% to 8.24%.

Two numbers, not one — and only at some lenders

CHIP quotes two 5-year rates, and the chart plots the first one. The advertised rate is what a new client is offered. Alongside it sits a separate, higher renewal schedule — the rate an existing mortgage resets to when its term ends.

The distance between the two has widened. In April 2022, CHIP’s renewal schedule sat 0.35 points above its advertised rate. Today the gap is 0.60 points.

This two-rate structure isn’t how every lender works. Some price the reset at the same rate a brand-new client would get that day — Equitable Bank publishes exactly that promise — so for those lenders there’s no second number waiting at renewal. Which kind of lender a homeowner signs with is invisible on day one and decides real money at the first reset.

What a term reset can look like

That history matters for one reason, and it isn’t prediction.

A reverse mortgage is a loan for life. The rate is only ever chosen for a stretch of it — when each term ends, the rate resets to whatever the lender is offering on that future day.

The record above is what those future days can look like. Someone who signed at 4.59% in late 2020 and took a five-year term met a very different market at the first reset. Someone who signed in April 2023 at 6.89% and took a one-year term met 8.24% a year later.

Nobody reads the next move in advance, professionals included, and this page makes no forecast. What the history shows is the range a single five-year term can live through — which is exactly why the renewal questions further down belong in the comparison from day one.

Why are reverse mortgage rates higher than regular mortgage rates?

Because the lender is paid entirely differently, and later.

In mid-June 2026, The Globe and Mail measured the lowest reverse mortgage 5-year fixed at 6.44% against 3.99% for the best regular 5-year fixed — a gap of about 2.4 points. After the late-June cuts, the premium sits closer to 2.2 points against the best regular fixed rates, and one to two points above typical home equity line of credit rates.

What the extra two points actually buy

The premium has a structural explanation, not a predatory one.

A regular mortgage lender collects a payment every month, and can act quickly if the payments stop. A reverse mortgage lender hands over the money and then waits — possibly for decades — with no required monthly mortgage payments along the way. The loan is repaid when the homeowner sells, permanently moves out, or after the last borrower passes away.

On top of that patience sits the No Negative Equity Guarantee. As long as the homeowner obligations are met — property taxes paid, home insured, the home reasonably maintained — neither the borrower nor the estate ever repays more than the home’s fair market value at the time the mortgage becomes due. If the market ever fails to cover the balance, that loss lands on the lender.

Patience plus that guarantee is what the extra two points buy. What the guarantee means for a family at the end is covered in what happens to a reverse mortgage when you die.

Where these rates sit next to everything else you could borrow

“Higher” needs a comparison to mean anything, so it helps to place the premium on the full borrowing map.

Reverse mortgage rates sit modestly above regular mortgages and lines of credit. They sit far below credit cards, unsecured loans, and private mortgages — the territory some retirees otherwise end up in when a bank says no.

The comparison with a home equity line of credit runs that trade-off in full: the line of credit is cheaper on paper, and most retirees can’t pass the income tests to get one.

The rate is also only one line on the list. Reverse mortgage pros and cons in Canada weighs all of them side by side.

How are reverse mortgage rates set?

Three layers set the number a lender posts, and none of them is a mystery.

• The Bank of Canada sets the floor for variable pricing. Its policy rate — held at 2.25% in July 2026 — drives prime, and prime drives every variable and adjustable rate in the country, reverse mortgages included. Eight times a year, on a published schedule, the Bank announces whether that floor moves.
• Funding costs set fixed rates. A lender has to raise the money it lends, through savings deposits, guaranteed investment certificates, and investor notes. Fixed mortgage pricing across Canada follows the cost of that money, which moves with bond yields rather than with the policy rate directly. When funding costs ease, posted reverse mortgage rates follow — the exact mechanism Canadian Mortgage Trends documented behind the 2026 declines.
• Competition decides how much of the saving reaches you. Canada had one reverse mortgage lender for over three decades. It now has four, and the difference shows in their behaviour.

When funding costs eased this year, all four cut posted rates within weeks of one another, and two of them now share the lowest posted rate in the market. A market where lenders undercut each other within weeks is a market working in the borrower’s favour.

The numbers behind that competition — market size, lender shares, growth — are tracked with sources in the reverse mortgage statistics for Canada hub.

The practical reading of all three layers: nobody controls reverse mortgage rates from one desk, but the direction is watchable. The remaining 2026 decision dates — September 2, October 28, December 9 — are the natural checkpoints.

Which numbers besides the rate decide what a reverse mortgage costs?

Four of them. This is the part of the pricing picture that rate tables — on this site or anywhere else — can’t show, and it’s where mortgages that look identical on rate stop being identical.

The set-up costs, compared all-in

Advertised set-up fees across the market run $995 to $1,795. Appraisals add roughly $300 to $600, and independent legal advice typically $800 to $1,200 on top.

The advertised numbers mislead on their own. One lender’s higher fee includes its legal work, so only one lawyer gets hired. Another lender’s low sticker bills the closing-lawyer work separately.

Added up, the “cheap” lender and the “expensive” lender often land much closer than the stickers suggest. The math is worked through in the guide to the best reverse mortgage companies in Canada, and every cost is itemized in reverse mortgage fees in Canada.

The price of money you take later

Many reverse mortgages let you take more money down the road — a monthly top-up to income, or a lump sum when a roof or a grandchild’s wedding arrives.

Lenders price that later money differently. Some simply give their best current rate at the time. Others add a premium to the rate on the new money. Some charge a fee each time, and some charge nothing.

So a homeowner who plans to take money in stages can end up paying a meaningfully different average rate at two lenders posting the same headline number.

The renewal reset — the one that costs the most, years later

A reverse mortgage term ends in a rate reset, not a clean break.

The rate moves to the lender’s going rate for a new term, with no requalifying. But unlike a regular mortgage, the homeowner isn’t automatically free to move to another lender penalty-free at that moment — the early-payout charge runs from the date the mortgage was first funded, not from the term that was chosen.

Some lenders promise the reset lands at their posted rate, the same rate a brand-new client would be offered that day. Others price each renewal file by file, and that number can come back above posted.

Nothing in a day-one quote reveals which kind of lender is which. It shows up five years later, on a balance that has grown. A broker who arranges these mortgages every week knows each lender’s reset track record, and it’s one of the main inputs in recommending where to start. The dollars involved are worked out in the next section.

The exit charges

Leaving in the first few years costs an early-exit charge, and the charges differ in kind across lenders — a percentage of the balance at some, months of interest at others. That difference can be worth thousands on the same mortgage, before the charges shrink and disappear.

Every lender waives them entirely when the last borrower passes away, and eases them on a move to long-term care. Some allow around 10% a year of penalty-free prepayment, confirmed per product.

Which schedule fits which timeline is a comparison a broker runs before the choice, not after. Paying off a reverse mortgage early covers the four ways out, with a year-by-year calculator.

One more trade-off: the products that lend the most charge the most

The market’s top tier — up to 60% of home value for borrowers 70 and older — is reached through premium products at three of the four lenders. All three price that extra access the same way: a higher rate on the entire balance.

A homeowner who needs 40% of the home’s value shouldn’t pay the top tier’s rate for room that goes unused. How much each age can actually access is mapped in how much reverse mortgage you can get by age.

How much does a small rate difference actually cost?

Run the actual numbers, because the answer surprises rate-shoppers in both directions.

Take $150,000 borrowed against an Ontario home, interest compounding semi-annually, no payments made — the standard reverse mortgage structure.

Read what the table is saying. The entire distance between today’s lowest and highest advertised 5-year rates — the gap most shoppers agonize over — is worth about $1,600 over five years.

A half-point difference at one renewal, applied to the balance after it has grown, costs about four times as much.

That is the whole lesson of this page in two lines. Shopping today’s rate is worth doing. What the lender does to that rate at the first renewal is worth about four times more.

The number nobody quotes you on day one

Today’s rate is a number every lender will tell you. How that lender treats you at renewal is a number none of them quote, and it decides more of the total cost.

Two things make it bigger than the shopping decision.

The first is size. All four lenders’ advertised 5-year rates currently sit inside a 0.16-point band. At one lender, the advertised rate and the separate schedule an existing mortgage resets to are 0.60 points apart — almost four times the entire spread a shopper is choosing between today. That difference applies later, on a balance that has grown, and only to homeowners at a lender that prices renewals that way.

The second is repetition. A shopping decision happens once. A reverse mortgage kept for twenty years passes through three or four renewals, and each one lands at whatever that lender is offering on that day. The seven-year record above ran from 4.59% to 8.24% — so “whatever the lender offers that day” is a wide range, and the reset is not a moment a homeowner can shop freely, because the early-payout charge still runs from the original funding date.

So the question worth asking before signing isn’t only “who is cheapest today?” It’s “what does this lender do to me at every renewal after that?”

That answer isn’t printed anywhere. It comes from watching how each lender has actually treated existing clients over years of files — which is the part of this comparison a broker does, at no cost to the homeowner, before the choice is made rather than five years after it.

The differences this table can’t show — a set-up fee structure, a premium on money taken later, an exit charge that doesn’t suit the timeline — can each move the real cost by more than the sticker gap too.

None of that makes today’s rate irrelevant. It makes today’s rate one input among five, and rarely the largest one.

Why the amount you take matters more than the rate

The same math carries a second lesson.

You’re charged interest only on the money you actually take — not on the maximum approved. So borrowing $100,000 instead of $150,000 cuts every number above by a third, at any rate.

The size of what you take moves the ten-year cost far more than the choice between 6.23% and 6.39% ever will.

How is reverse mortgage interest calculated?

The same way as on a regular Canadian mortgage. The interest is worked out twice a year — that’s called semi-annual compounding, and it’s the standard across Canadian mortgages. The only difference is where the interest goes. On a regular mortgage, you pay it every month. Here, nothing leaves your bank account: the interest is added to the mortgage balance instead, and the next time interest is worked out, it’s calculated on that slightly larger balance.

Here’s what that looks like, year by year, on $150,000 at 6.39% — the highest posted 5-year fixed (July 2026) — with no payments made:

Each year adds a little more interest than the year before, because the balance it’s calculated on has grown. That’s all compound interest is.

Enter your home’s value, your age, and the amount you’d want to unlock, and watch what happens to the balance and your equity over the years:

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

Should you choose a fixed or variable reverse mortgage rate?

Start with the product itself, because it isn’t built the way most people expect.

A reverse mortgage is a loan for life, and the rate is simply chosen in stretches along the way. Most homeowners take fixed terms of one to five years — the 5-year fixed is the benchmark. When a term ends, the rate resets to the lender’s going rate for a new term, and the mortgage carries on as before.

Variable-rate options run alongside those fixed terms. One lender goes further with a lifetime fixed rate, where the rate on the first advance stays locked for as long as the mortgage lasts — the anchor product in Bloom’s lineup.

And for bridging to a planned sale, a separate short-term open product can be repaid at any time with no exit charge, with that freedom priced into its set-up fee.

Why the end of a term is not a free exit

What catches people every year is the habit they bring over from regular mortgages. There, reaching the end of a term means a clean exit: the mortgage matures, and it can be paid out or moved to another lender without penalty.

A reverse mortgage never offers that moment. The early-payout charge follows the date the money was first advanced, not the term that was picked.

So a homeowner who takes a one-year term planning to pay everything out after the year will still face an early-payout charge when that year is up.

The familiar variable-rate advantage doesn’t make the trip either. On a regular mortgage, a variable rate can be broken at any time for just three months’ interest. On a reverse mortgage, fixed and variable sit on the same early-payout schedule — so choosing variable buys no cheaper exit.

What choosing variable really bets on

Once the exit advantage is off the table, variable comes down to a single idea: a belief that the Bank of Canada will keep cutting.

The same is true of grabbing a one-year or two-year fixed term because it posts a little lower than the five-year. The shorter the term, the sooner the reset arrives — at whatever the market happens to look like then. Rates at that moment can just as easily be higher.

Guessing the direction of rates isn’t something anyone does reliably, professionals included. That makes the shorter commitment a gamble more often than a plan.

This is why most borrowers, in practice, settle on the 5-year fixed: today’s known rate, held for the longest stretch on offer, with the fewest resets to weather along the way. The lifetime fixed extends that logic as far as it can go, trading no resets at all against steeper early-exit charges in the first few years if plans change.

The homeowner with a genuine conviction that rates are heading down, and the patience to be wrong for a while, is the natural fit for variable. For everyone else, certainty tends to be worth more than the gamble.

The one thing that softens a rising rate

There’s one difference that softens the variable risk without erasing it, and it’s worth understanding on its own.

Because there’s no required monthly mortgage payment, a rising rate never touches the monthly budget the way it does on a regular mortgage, where a variable-rate jump squeezes the household within weeks.

On a reverse mortgage the effect lands somewhere quieter: the balance grows a little faster, shifting the cost to eventual equity rather than to this month’s spending.

Home appreciation works on the other side of that ledger over the same years, which is why Canadian borrowers keep about half their equity on average even after many years.

Still, a cost that lands later is a reason to respect rate certainty rather than ignore it — one more reason the 5-year fixed remains the usual choice. How the interest and the repayment fit together over the whole life of the loan is laid out in how a reverse mortgage works in Canada.

Can you get a better rate than the posted rate?

Frequently — because posted rates are the retail price, and several forces work below them.

Pricing on a real file is set by the details: age, property type and location, product tier, and term. That’s why the same posted rate produces different offers for different homeowners.

Lenders also run unpublished rate specials that never appear on any rate page — sharp pricing reserved for competitive situations.

And the spread between lenders on the same file is often wider than the posted table suggests. The lender posting the lowest rate this month isn’t always the one that prices a particular file best, once the age curve, the fee structure, and the product tier are applied to a real home.

If you signed at a higher rate years ago

There’s a group of homeowners for whom a better rate already exists: those holding an older reverse mortgage from a higher-rate year.

A meaningful share of new reverse mortgages in Canada are switches — homeowners moving an existing balance to a lower rate. Breaking the old mortgage can carry a cost, so the move only makes sense when the rate gap is large enough.

After the declines of 2026, that math deserves a fresh look for anyone who signed years ago.

What the comparison costs you: nothing

Getting below the posted rate is a comparison exercise, and it costs the homeowner nothing to have it done.

A mortgage broker is paid by the lender, not by the client, and compares every reverse mortgage lender in Canada on the same file — the posted rate, the file-specific pricing, the fee structure, the later-draw terms, and the renewal reputation together.

Many homeowners end up with better pricing through a broker than the same lender would have offered them directly. The complete picture of how the product works, from application to repayment, is in the reverse mortgage guide for Ontario.

Free Guide:The Canadian Reverse Mortgage Guide

• ✓How much tax-free cash you could unlock — and what moves the number
• ✓The real costs, rates, and fees — nothing buried in fine print
• ✓How the lenders (CHIP, Equitable Bank, Home Trust, Bloom) really compare
• ✓When a reverse mortgage is the wrong choice

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Where are reverse mortgage rates heading?

Nobody can forecast rates reliably, but the direction of 2026 so far is a matter of record, and the calendar ahead is published.

Posted reverse mortgage rates have fallen through 2026 as funding costs eased and four-way competition did its work. The late-June round of cuts compressed the whole market into a 0.16-point band.

The Bank of Canada’s remaining decision dates for 2026 are September 2, October 28, and December 9. This page is re-verified after those dates, and the market context behind the numbers is maintained in the statistics hub.

The market behind the rates keeps growing. Canadians have borrowed $10.9 billion through reverse mortgages, with new borrowing growing more than 16% a year over the past decade — and each new competitor has pushed pricing in the borrower’s direction.

Falling rates change the math of every comparison on this page, which is why each one carries its date.

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 20, 2026.