CMHC MLI Select Calculator

Start with what MLI Select is an exception to. Buy a conventional 1–4 unit investment property in Canada and the rules are unforgiving: 20% down minimum, and no CMHC insurance available at any price. Your leverage is capped and your cost of capital reflects it. Cross into purpose-built rental with 5 or more residential units and CMHC's MLI Select program opens a different world — up to 95% LTV and up to a 50-year amortization at the program's top tier. That is not a marginal improvement. It is the difference between needing a fifth of the purchase price in cash and needing a twentieth of it, on an asset whose income you can actually underwrite.

You earn your way there with points. MLI Select scores three commitments — affordability (holding rents below a market threshold), energy efficiency (a measured reduction against baseline), and accessibility (barrier-free design). Fifty points is the floor; below it the property is not eligible for the program at all. Above the floor the tiers step at 50, 70, and 100 points, and each tier is a real threshold rather than a smooth curve: the premium discount runs 10%, 20%, and 30% respectively, and the DSCR minimum tightens or loosens with it — the higher tiers reach as low as 1.10 against the roughly 1.20–1.25 a conventional deal must clear. Five points short of a tier is worth nothing; five points into it changes your whole capital stack. That asymmetry is why sophisticated sponsors design the building around the scoring rather than scoring the building they designed.

Amortization is the program's sharpest trade-off, and it cuts both ways at once. Stretching to 40 or 50 years lowers your monthly payment, which raises your DSCR, which lets the property support a larger loan — a genuine qualifying lever when cap rates are compressed. But since the July 2025 update the premium carries a surcharge of 0.25% for every 5-year increment beyond 25 years, so a 50-year amortization adds roughly 1.25% to your premium rate. You are buying DSCR headroom with premium dollars. Sometimes that is obviously worth it and sometimes it quietly isn't; the only way to know is to run both.

The insight most sponsors miss until underwriting: your loan is capped by the lesser of the LTV limit and the DSCR limit, not by whichever one you were focused on. Winning 100 points gets you a 95% LTV ceiling, but if the building's NOI only services a loan at 78% of value at a 1.10 DSCR, then 78% is your deal and the 95% is decoration. The reverse happens too — strong income, but points too thin to request the LTV the income could carry. This calculator shows both limits side by side and names which one binds, because that is the number that tells you what to fix. Pair it with the DSCR calculator, cap rate calculator, and rental property ROI calculator to see the whole picture.

One honest note on the premium: CMHC publishes its multi-unit premium schedule by LTV band and revises it over time, so this calculator asks you to enter the base rate you have been quoted rather than guessing from a table that may be stale. It then applies the two rules that are stable and verifiable — your tier discount and the amortization surcharge. Confirm the current base rate, point scoring, and DSCR minimums with CMHC or an approved lender.