Why 48% of First-Time Buyers Now Use a Mortgage Broker
By Renée Huse · Spire Mortgage Team
Here's something I hear all the time from first-time buyers walking into my office: "I already talked to my bank, isn't that enough?" Ten years ago, maybe. Not anymore. A national survey of nearly 2,000 Canadians, released this year by Mortgage Professionals Canada, just confirmed what I've been watching happen in my own pipeline for the past two years: more Canadians are refusing to let the bank be the only conversation, and they're bringing a broker into the process instead.
Overall broker share hit 38% in 2026 — a five-year high — and jumped to 48% among recent first-time buyers. That's not a rounding error. That's nearly half of new buyers deciding a single bank quote isn't the whole story. In this post, I'll break down exactly what's driving that shift, who benefits most, and where I still see people leave real money on the table by skipping this step.
In This Post
The Broker Advantage in 2026: What the Data Shows
Let's start with the number that stopped me mid-scroll: broker share climbed from 30% in 2021 to 38% in 2026, and most of that growth happened in the last twelve months. The five-year trend line tells its own story — 30% in 2021, dipping to 29% in 2022, climbing to 34% in 2023, dropping back to 32% in 2024 during a genuinely slow year for the housing sector, then jumping six full points to 38% in 2025. After a quiet 2024, brokers came roaring back — and the gains weren't concentrated in one corner of the market. Every age group, every region, and every buyer type moved in the same direction.
Age tells an interesting story. Buyers 18–34 and 35–54 both sit at 44% broker share, up 10 points in a single year. Buyers 55+ trail at 24%, which makes sense — that group is more likely to already have a long-standing bank relationship and less likely to be shopping for a brand-new mortgage. Regionally, Alberta sits at 42% (+5 points), and Quebec leads the country at 44% after a 14-point jump.
But the number I actually care about most isn't market share — it's what happens after the deal closes. Among people who used a broker, 83% said they'd recommend one to a friend or family member, a five-year high. And 72% said they'd use a broker again for their next mortgage, back to levels we haven't seen since 2020. That's not a channel people are stumbling into. That's a channel people are choosing on purpose, twice.
Why More Canadians Are Choosing Brokers (Hint: It's Not Just Rate)
Rate is still the headline reason people call a broker — 54% say "best rate" is why they came to us, and I won't pretend that isn't a huge part of the job. But look at what's climbing underneath it: 33% say access to multiple quotes, 31% say help understanding their options and the process, 26% say lender recommendations, 25% say help with paperwork, and 24% say better customer service. That's five reasons that have nothing to do with rate, and every one of them is trending up.
The shift is even sharper among recent first-time buyers. Compared to 2024, this group reported a 14-point jump in wanting help understanding their options and the process (now 40%), a 10-point jump in wanting lender recommendations (28%), a 12-point jump citing better customer service (28%), and a 6-point jump in wanting products matched to their actual needs (22%).
Here's what most people don't realize: a bank employee can only sell you what that bank offers. They're not being dishonest — they're just working with one shelf of products, and their job is to close you on it. A broker is looking at your income, your down payment, your credit, and your five-year plans, then shopping that exact profile across dozens of lenders, including the big banks themselves. That's a structurally different conversation. One person is presenting an offer; the other is negotiating on your behalf. The rate conversation used to be the whole pitch. Now it's the opening line — and the follow-up questions are where the real value shows up.
I'd add one more thing the survey doesn't fully capture: mortgage products themselves have gotten more complicated in the last two years. Fixed-rate mortgages still dominate at 70%, but variable-rate borrowing jumped to 26% in 2025 — the first meaningful increase in three years — with the remaining 4% choosing a hybrid split between the two. That's a market where "just pick fixed like everyone else" is no longer safe default advice, and it's exactly the kind of decision that benefits from someone walking through the trade-offs with you instead of leaving you to guess.
Who Benefits Most From Using a Broker
First-time buyers are the group leaning into brokers hardest right now (48%, +10 points), and it makes sense — this is the group with the most decisions stacked on top of each other for the first time: how much to put down, whether to use an FHSA or the RRSP Home Buyers' Plan, whether to go fixed or variable, and whether their bank's "pre-approval" is actually the best they can do.
Other recent buyers (42%, +6 points) and repeat buyers benefit too, especially anyone who's self-employed, has variable income, or is carrying a bit of debt — situations where one lender's guidelines might say no while another's say yes. And here's an edge case worth calling out: the 55+ segment sits at only 24% broker share, the lowest of any age group. In my experience, that's less about brokers being less useful to this group and more about inertia — people who've renewed with the same bank for 20 years assume there's nothing left to negotiate. That assumption gets expensive fast at renewal time, which I've written about separately.
One more data point worth sitting with: among broker clients, big banks actually gained share in 2025 (56%, up from 53%), while non-bank and small-bank lenders slipped (19%, down from 25%) and credit unions and trust companies gained (8%, up from 4%). The takeaway isn't "brokers push you to alternative lenders" — it's the opposite. A broker's job is to find whichever lender, big bank included, actually fits your file best.
The survey doesn't break out self-employed borrowers or newcomers to Canada specifically, but in my day-to-day work, these are the two groups where the broker advantage is most obvious. A bank's underwriting checklist is built for a T4 employee with two years at the same job. If you're self-employed and your taxable income doesn't match your actual cash flow, or you're a newcomer to Canada without two years of local credit history, one lender's "no" can be another lender's "yes" — and you'd never know that from a single bank appointment.
🏠 Real-Life Example: Meagan's Story
Meagan is 29, a first-time buyer in Calgary, buying a $450,000 townhouse with 5% down ($22,500). Like a lot of buyers, she'd already sat down with her bank and walked away with a pre-approval at 4.29% on a 5-year fixed — and she almost stopped there.
Because her down payment was under 20%, her mortgage needed CMHC insurance. On her $427,500 base loan, the 4.00% premium at that loan-to-value tier added $17,100, bringing her insured mortgage to $444,600. Instead of taking the bank's number as final, we shopped her file and came back with 4.04% from a credit union lender — a lender she'd never have called on her own. On a 25-year amortization, that difference took her monthly payment from roughly $2,409 down to about $2,349: a $60/month difference, or roughly $3,600 saved just over her 5-year term.
We also walked through whether the newer 30-year amortization option (available to first-time buyers on insured mortgages) made sense for her cash flow — she decided against it once she saw how much more interest it added over the life of the loan, and opted for the shorter amortization instead. That's the "matched to my needs" piece the survey data keeps pointing to: not just a lower rate, but the right structure for her actual situation.
Current stress test context: Every insured and most uninsured mortgages in Canada are still qualified at the higher of your contract rate + 2%, or a 5.25% floor. With 2026 five-year fixed rates in the 4.0%–4.3% range, that puts most borrowers' qualifying rate around 6.0%–6.3% — one more reason it pays to have someone double-checking the math before you commit.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
I see these come up constantly, even with clients who are otherwise sharp about money:
- Treating your bank's first number as your only number. Banks have more room to move than the initial offer suggests — but they usually only move it if you have something to compare it against.
- Stopping at one quote. A third of broker clients say access to multiple quotes is a top reason they came to us. If you've only ever seen one lender's paperwork, you don't actually know what "competitive" means for your file.
- Focusing only on the rate, not the structure. Variable-rate holders are almost evenly split between payments that move with prime and payments that stay fixed (55% vs. 45%). Picking the wrong structure for your risk tolerance can matter more than a few basis points on rate.
- Waiting until renewal to ask questions. The 55+ group has the lowest broker usage of any age bracket, and I think a lot of that comes down to assuming loyalty gets rewarded. It rarely does automatically — you have to ask.
- Assuming brokers are only for people who "can't get approved" at a bank. Big banks actually gained share among broker clients last year. Brokers aren't an alternative-lender workaround — they're a wider table with your bank still sitting at it.
- Not asking who actually reviews self-employed or newcomer files. If your income doesn't look like a standard T4 paycheque, the person underwriting your file matters as much as the lender's posted rate. Not every institution reviews these files the same way.
What to Do Next
If you've already got a pre-approval sitting in your inbox from your bank, don't sign anything yet. Bring it to me first. It costs nothing to have a second set of eyes compare it against what else is available, and — based on what almost half of first-time buyers are now doing — there's a real chance we find something that fits you better, whether that's a lower rate, a different structure, or simply someone walking you through the fine print before you're locked in for five years.
Let's break this down together so it actually makes sense for your situation, not the average Canadian's.
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