This calculator's break-even rent figure — the metric none of the site's other rental tools show — is built on a fixed 5.49% rate and 25-year amortization, both hardcoded defaults rather than your actual quote. The Bank of Canada's posted 5-year conventional rate has been running at 6.09% through mid-September 2026, six-tenths of a point above what this model assumes, which means your real break-even rent is higher than the number this page shows.
Break-even rent: the number the other calculators don't give you
This is the only calculator in this batch that solves for break-even rent — the monthly rent at which cash flow hits exactly zero after every operating expense and the mortgage payment. Its results panel reads that figure directly against your entered rent and tells you the monthly gap or buffer. That's a genuinely different question than cap rate or yield: it asks not "what does this property return" but "how far above zero am I actually operating," which is the number that determines how much rent softness or a vacancy month the deal can absorb before it turns cash-flow negative.
The rate and amortization baked into this one
This calculator's own component hardcodes a 5.49% annual rate and a 25-year amortization for every projection, regardless of what you enter elsewhere on the page — only purchase price, monthly rent, down payment percentage, and appreciation rate are actually configurable. The 25-year amortization is one plausible uninsured schedule, not a rule: a 20%-or-more down payment puts the purchase into uninsured-mortgage territory, where federal guidance says the lender sets the maximum amortization itself, and 25 years remains the common ceiling even where a longer schedule is technically available. The 5.49% rate assumption is a different story — it's noticeably below the Bank of Canada's own posted 5-year conventional mortgage rate of 6.09% as of mid-September 2026, so every cash-flow and break-even figure on this page is likely optimistic relative to a real quote at that posted level. And because any purchase this size is an uninsured mortgage, OSFI requires the lender to qualify you at the greater of your contract rate plus 2 points, or a 5.25% floor before approval — a separate hurdle from the rate this calculator actually charges against your cash flow.
Ten years of rent growth, rent control permitting
The 10-year total-return figure this calculator produces compounds your entered appreciation rate across a full decade, but it doesn't separately model rent growth against provincial rent-control ceilings — appreciation and rent are treated independently in the model, which is reasonable for the property's value but worth checking against reality for the rent side specifically. A tenant who stays the full decade sees their rent capped annually at whatever guideline the province sets: Ontario's 2026 guideline is 2.1%, British Columbia's is 2.3%. Ten years of renewals at those rates compounds to roughly 23% (Ontario) or 26% (BC) cumulative rent growth on a sitting lease — market-rent resets only happen at turnover.
A marginal tax rate is baked in, but CCA isn't shown separately
This calculator's underlying model also assumes a 43% marginal tax rate as a fixed input, though that figure doesn't appear directly in the results panel shown to you — it's used internally rather than surfaced. What the results panel does show — the annual income statement, cap rate, and cash flow — never separately breaks out capital cost allowance. CRA's own rules put most rental buildings in Class 1 (4% declining-balance) or Classes 3, 6, 31, or 32 by construction material and acquisition date, with furniture and equipment in Class 8 at 20%. Claiming CCA can lower the real tax bill on the cash flow this page shows you — but because the model applies a single fixed tax-rate assumption without breaking out CCA as its own line, you won't see that benefit itemized anywhere in the output.
Foreign buyers and scaling past one unit
Two eligibility questions sit outside anything this calculator asks. First, Canada's federal ban on non-Canadians purchasing residential property — covering buildings of up to three dwelling units, in force since January 1, 2023 and extended to January 1, 2027 — determines who can even run this calculator's numbers against a specific address in a covered area; the ban carves out exceptions for certain temporary residents, refugees, and Canadian-spouse co-purchases, but the default position is exclusion. Second, if you're evaluating scaling past a single unit into a small multi-unit building, CMHC's MLI Select program changes the financing math entirely: at its lowest points tier, it permits up to 85% loan-to-value and a 40-year amortization; its top tier allows up to 95% LTV and a 50-year amortization — both well beyond what this single-unit calculator's fixed 25-year, 20%-down assumptions model, and worth a separate look before assuming this page's break-even math applies to a multi-unit purchase.
The CCA recapture bill hiding at the end of the 10-year hold
Neither this calculator's income statement nor the article above shows what happens to capital cost allowance once the property is actually sold. CRA's rental income guide caps the first year's CCA claim at half the normal rate under the half-year rule, then requires the claimed depreciation to be reconciled against the sale price: proceeds above the property's remaining undepreciated capital cost trigger a recapture added back to income, up to the total CCA claimed; proceeds below it produce a terminal loss instead.
What the 10-year appreciation figure owes in capital gains tax
The 10-year total-return figure compounds your entered appreciation rate over the full holding period, but nothing on this page addresses what tax applies to that gain on an eventual sale. In March 2025 the federal government confirmed it was cancelling the previously proposed increase to the capital gains inclusion rate — the share of a capital gain added to taxable income stays at one-half, not the two-thirds rate that had been proposed for individuals' gains above C$250,000 a year. At this calculator's own fixed 43% marginal-tax assumption, a C$150,000 price gain over the ten years works out to C$75,000 taxable (C$150,000 × 50% inclusion) and roughly C$32,250 in tax (C$75,000 × 43%) — an amount the total-return figure never subtracts.
Methodology
This calculator's own hardcoded assumptions (5.49% rate, 25-year amortization, 43% marginal tax rate) are read directly from its source component. Bank of Canada and OSFI figures are from the Bank of Canada Valet API and OSFI's minimum qualifying rate guidance. Provincial rent-increase guidelines are from Ontario's and BC's own tenancy authorities; the compounded 10-year figures are arithmetic (1.021^10 and 1.023^10) applied to those published annual rates. CCA classes are from CRA's rental income guide. The foreign-buyer ban and MLI Select figures are from CMHC's own prohibition guidance and MLI Select program page.
Sources
- Bank of Canada — Valet API, Conventional mortgage: 5-year posted rate — accessed 2026-09-21
- OSFI — Minimum qualifying rate for uninsured mortgages — accessed 2026-09-21
- Government of Ontario — Rent increase guideline — accessed 2026-09-21
- Government of British Columbia — Rent increases — accessed 2026-09-21
- Canada Revenue Agency — T4036, Rental Income — accessed 2026-09-21
- CMHC — Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act — accessed 2026-09-21
- CMHC — MLI Select — accessed 2026-09-21
- Prime Minister of Canada — Prime Minister Mark Carney cancels proposed capital gains tax increase — accessed 2026-09-21