Bridge Financing BC 2026: Buy Before You Sell (Costs & Rates)

• A firm sale on your current home. The contract on the home you are selling must have all subjects removed. Subject to financing, subject to inspection, subject to sale of buyer's property, every condition gone. Banks will not bridge against a conditional offer or an unsold listing.
• A new mortgage with the same lender. Most banks will only bridge for clients who are taking out the new home's mortgage with them. RBC, TD, BMO, CIBC, Scotiabank, and National Bank all follow this pattern. A standalone bridge from a bank you do not bank with is rare.

You will also need to provide both contracts: the signed sale agreement on the old home and the signed purchase agreement on the new one. The bank uses the sale price minus your existing mortgage to confirm the bridge amount is covered.

TD caps standard bridge loans at 90 days. RBC and the others typically write 90 to 120 days, with longer terms case by case. If you need six months or more, you are likely looking at a private lender, not a bank.

The Sequencing Problem Most Buyers Get Wrong

Bridge financing only works if the timeline lines up. The most common mistake in BC is making a subject-free offer on a new home before the existing home is sold firm. If your old place sits on the market for two months, you have no bridge access and no way to fund the closing on the new one.

The safer order in a balanced or buyer's market:

• List your current home first. Get it priced correctly and tested by the market.
• Accept a firm offer with subjects removed. Now you have proof of sale and a known closing date.
• Then make an offer on the new home, ideally with a closing date one to four weeks after the sale closes (no bridge needed) or one to four weeks before (bridge needed but tight and cheap).

In a hot seller's market, the order sometimes flips. Buyers feel pressure to lock the new home before they have a sale on the old one, often using a subject-to-sale offer on the new place. That works if the seller accepts subjects, which they often will not when there are competing offers. Watching daily inventory and days-on-market data on the Zealty market stats page is the cheapest way to figure out which order applies in your specific neighbourhood right now.

Bridge Financing vs HELOC vs Private Lender

Banks are not the only option, and they are not always the right one. Three real alternatives in BC:

HELOC on the existing home

If you have a home equity line of credit already in place on your current home, you can draw from it to cover the new home's down payment, then pay it back when the sale closes. Rates are usually prime + 0.5% to prime + 1%, so meaningfully cheaper than a bridge. The catch: you have to set up the HELOC well before listing. Most lenders will not approve a new HELOC once your home is listed for sale.

Private bridge lender

Private lenders write bridges without requiring a firm sale, and they will go longer than 120 days. The price is much higher: rates of 9% to 12% are common, plus lender fees of 1% to 2% of the loan amount. A private bridge is a tool for buyers in unusual situations, foreclosure scenarios, or estate purchases, not a default choice for a normal move.

Subject-to-sale offer

Skip financing entirely and write the offer on the new home as subject to the sale of your current one. The seller can keep marketing and accept a backup offer, but you avoid bridge interest. This works in cooler markets where sellers will accept conditional offers, less so in tight markets.

Tax and Legal Items People Forget

A bridge loan does not change the BC Property Transfer Tax owed on the new purchase. PTT is calculated on the new home's price regardless of how the down payment is funded. On a $1,650,000 home, PTT runs roughly $30,000 (1% on the first $200K, 2% on $200K to $2M).

The first-time home buyer PTT exemption does not help here, since by definition you already own a home. The exemption applies only to buyers who have never owned a principal residence anywhere in the world.

One useful note for the timing: the lawyer handling both transactions needs to be looped in early. Most BC real estate lawyers can run a sale and purchase plus a bridge through a single conveyance, but they need both contracts and the bridge instructions at least two weeks before closing. Ask your realtor for a lawyer who has run bridge transactions in BC before; the workflow is different from a standalone purchase.

If the new home is a strata property, factor in the strata estoppel certificate and any special assessments before committing to a closing date. The Zealty Strata Browser covers 14,000+ BC strata buildings and is the fastest way to surface red flags before you write the offer.

When a Bridge Is the Wrong Answer

Three situations where a bridge does not solve the problem:

• Your current home has not sold and you have no buyer. A bank will not bridge without a firm sale. Either wait, drop the price, or accept a conditional offer on the new home.
• The closing gap is more than four months. Bank bridges max out around 120 days. Past that, you are looking at private lenders or a different structure entirely.
• Your equity is too thin. If after closing costs your old home will only generate $250K of net equity and your new home needs $400K down, a bridge cannot fill that gap. You need a different financing plan, often a higher mortgage on the new home or a HELOC layered in.

Bottom Line for BC Buyers

Bridge financing is the right tool when you have a firm sale, a small closing gap, and a bank that already holds your mortgage business. On a typical Metro Vancouver move with closings two to three weeks apart, the all-in cost is usually $1,500 to $3,500. That is the price of buying the right home without lining up two simultaneous closings, which is rarely possible in practice.

Get a mortgage broker involved before you list. They can shop the bridge alongside the new mortgage, confirm the sequencing works for your specific lender, and flag any deal-killers before you write the first offer.

When you are ready to look, start your search on Zealty with full MLS pricing history, sold-to-previous-price ratios, and saved searches that email you the moment a matching listing hits the market. For a sense of how today's BC market is moving, the Metro Vancouver housing market page shows live inventory, sales, and median prices by property type.