Has anyone actually successfully made use of this and can provide some details on process and timelines?
I recently tried and came away frustrated and unsuccessful. The outcome is I did get the house in the timeframe I wanted, so no ongoing drama relating to this.
When I first talked to my mortgage specialist at my bank and asked about a withdrawal under HBP, I was told that I'd need to go in branch and talk to a teller. I'd get a form to fill out, but would need a purchase agreement saying that I'm committed to buying a certain house and I couldn't do that yet, because I hadn't even looked at the time of our first meeting.
Fast forward a few days, I find a spec home, sit down to write up a purchase agreement with salesman with a certain expiry date. A few days pass and I finally get an accepted signed copy back from the builder and the expiry date is looming. I go to a bank branch expecting to fill out a form, get the HBP thing setup and withdraw to make my down payment. I tell the teller that I'd like to make a withdrawal under HBP and she gives me this dumbass look wondering WTF I'm talking about. She types a few things and tells me that I don't have such an account... uh... what? Does it become a separate account for me to draw from? Doesn't seem to make any sense. I ask her why don't she ask someone who might be more familiar with this. 10 minutes later she comes back and tells me that I need to make an appointment with some specialist and an appointment that works with my schedule wouldn't be available until a week later well after my deadline. I really didn't want to miss this opportunity and let it slip away. I leave the branch and call the 1-800 number instead. Same story, I need to make an appointment and there are no time slots that works for me available for a week. So I tell them just make a regular withdraw and I'll eat the tax, just get me the money! They do as I say and lo and behold, money was available the next morning.
This wasn't a small credit union or anything like that. They're one of the big 3. A guide with the actual steps and timeline would've been really helpful for me, but no one person I was dealing with could/would tell me exactly what I should've expected in the HBP withdraw process. So I still don't know how that should work since I didn't end up making a HBP withdraw. In theory it sounded good, but trying to actually do it was pretty painful for me.