Canadian investment property financing is unforgiving. Buy a 1–4 unit rental and you need a minimum 20% down payment, with CMHC mortgage insurance simply unavailable for non-owner-occupied purchases. Meanwhile cap rates have compressed to a national multifamily average near 4.4%, and 3.5–4.5% in Toronto and Vancouver — so the building often cannot service the debt anyway. Those two facts together are why so much Canadian rental investing is really an appreciation bet.
MLI Select is the exception. Cross the five-unit threshold and you enter a different financing universe: CMHC-insured multi-unit lending where leverage up to 95% LTV and amortization up to 50 years become possible — not automatically, but if you earn them.
The points system
MLI Select doesn't hand out one set of terms. You earn points across three categories, and better commitments earn better financing:
- Affordability — committing to rents below market thresholds for a defined period.
- Energy efficiency — performance improvements against baseline consumption.
- Accessibility — accessible units and universal design features.
You need a minimum of 50 points to qualify at all, and the program tiers at 50 / 70 / 100. Points combine across categories, so there is usually more than one route to a given tier — an energy-efficient building with some accessible units can reach the same tier as a deeply affordable one.
What each tier unlocks
- Under 50 points — not eligible for MLI Select. Standard CMHC multi-unit insurance can still reach 85% LTV.
- 50 points — 10% premium discount.
- 70 points — 20% premium discount, and access to lower DSCR minimums.
- 100 points — 30% premium discount, plus the headline terms: up to 95% LTV and amortization up to 50 years.
DSCR minimums are tiered too, going as low as 1.10 at higher tiers versus roughly 1.20–1.25 conventionally. In a market where buildings yield 4%, that gap is frequently the difference between a financeable deal and a dead one.
The amortization trade-off
Fifty-year amortization sounds like free money — a much lower annual payment, which mechanically raises your DSCR and lets the same NOI support a larger loan. But since a July 2025 update, CMHC charges a premium surcharge of +0.25% for every 5-year increment beyond 25 years. Stretching to 50 years therefore adds roughly 1.25% to your premium — and, of course, decades of additional interest.
The insight most people miss: which limit actually binds
"Up to 95% LTV" is a ceiling, not a promise. Your loan is capped by whichever is lower:
- The LTV limit — property value × your permitted LTV.
- The DSCR limit — the largest loan the building's NOI can service at the required minimum ratio.
In Canada's low-cap-rate markets, the DSCR limit very often binds first. You can earn 100 points, qualify for 95% LTV on paper, and still find the building's income only supports 78% — because a 4% yield cannot service a 95% loan no matter how many accessibility features it has. Investors who plan around the headline number and discover the binding constraint at underwriting have a real problem. The MLI Select calculator shows both limits side by side and tells you which one governs.
Why the five-unit line matters so much
The jump from a fourplex to a five-unit building is one of the most consequential thresholds in Canadian real estate. On one side: 20% down, no insurance, conventional DSCR of 1.20–1.25, and a stress test. On the other: potentially 95% LTV, 50-year amortization, DSCR as low as 1.10, and a discounted premium. Same asset class, same city, radically different financing.
Before you model anything, confirm the rules
CMHC revises MLI Select — the July 2025 surcharge change is a recent example — and publishes its premium schedule by LTV band. Program terms, premium rates, and tier requirements change over time. Treat any calculator (including ours) as a modelling tool, and confirm current rules and your quoted premium with CMHC or an approved lender before committing. Our calculator deliberately asks you to enter your quoted base premium rather than assuming one, then applies the verified tier discount and amortization surcharge to it — because a fabricated premium table would be worse than no table at all.
Start with the cap rate to establish NOI, check DSCR to see whether the income works at all, then run MLI Select to find your real ceiling.
CMHC's own MLI Select page states the program's tiers directly: 50 points reaches up to 85% LTV and 40-year amortization, 70 points up to 95% LTV and 45 years, 100 points up to 95% LTV and 50 years, with a minimum DSCR of 1.10 stated at every published tier. CMHC does not publish specific premium percentages for the program on that page — treat any exact discount or premium figure you find elsewhere as unconfirmed until your lender quotes it.
The CMHC page behind this program, read directly
CMHC's MLI Select page is the program's own source, and it is worth reading closely rather than through a broker's summary of it. It states the eligibility floor and the three tiers in one place: "Minimum 50 Points: Maximum LTV 85%, Maximum Amortization 40 years, Minimum DCR 1.1", with the 70- and 100-point tiers extending amortization to 45 and 50 years and LTV to 95%. Points are scored across affordability (up to 100 points for existing buildings, 50 for new construction), energy efficiency/GHG reductions (up to 100 points), and accessibility (up to 40 points) — three categories that can be combined, so a building doesn't need to max out any single one to reach a tier.
The points/LTV/amortization/DSCR table, as CMHC itself states it
| Points | Max LTV | Max amortization | Min DSCR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 (the floor to qualify at all) | 85% | 40 years | 1.10 |
| 70 | 95% | 45 years | 1.10 |
| 100 | 95% existing / up to 95% new construction | 50 years | 1.10 |
Source: CMHC MLI Select program page, retrieved 2026-09-21. Below 50 points, a building is not eligible for MLI Select at all, though standard (non-Select) CMHC multi-unit insurance can still reach 85% LTV.
Insured, but underwritten differently than a stress-tested mortgage
It's worth being precise about which rule governs which loan. Uninsured mortgages in Canada qualify against OSFI's minimum qualifying rate — the greater of the contract rate plus 2%, or a 5.25% floor — the familiar stress test. MLI Select is CMHC-insured multi-unit rental financing, and its own binding constraint is the DSCR minimum in the table above, applied against the property's net operating income, not a personal-income stress test. Sponsors moving from residential mortgage underwriting to multi-unit financing sometimes assume the stress test carries over; confirm with your lender which rule actually applies to a given deal.
Rates to use when you model this today
A DSCR-governed loan is only as good as the interest-rate assumption behind it. The Bank of Canada's target for the overnight rate has been 2.25% since October 30, 2025, confirmed unchanged again at the 2026-09-18 observation, while the chartered-bank prime rate stood at 4.45% as of the 2026-09-16 weekly observation. Neither of these is your mortgage rate — each financial institution sets its own prime rate, only influenced by the Bank of Canada's target rather than mechanically derived from it — but they're the right current reference points to sanity-check whatever rate a lender quotes you, rather than modelling against a number from months ago.
Why 5+ unit purpose-built rental is where this financing points capital
MLI Select exists to steer capital toward purpose-built rental supply, and Canada's rental-vacancy data shows why that supply is scarce even where it's loosening. Toronto's private apartment vacancy rate rose from 2.5% in October 2024 to 3.0% in October 2025, and average rent across all bedroom types still climbed from C$1,850 to C$1,913 over the same twelve months, per CMHC's own Rental Market Survey data tables for Toronto. A market that's loosening on paper but still getting more expensive is exactly the condition the program's affordability-points category is built to counteract — it rewards buildings that commit to rents below market thresholds rather than simply financing whatever gets built.
Confirm the current rules before you commit
CMHC revises MLI Select periodically and publishes its own premium schedule by LTV band separately from the program page cited here. Treat this page, and any calculator including ours, as a modelling tool built on the confirmed points/LTV/amortization/DSCR structure — not on an assumed premium table — and confirm your actual quoted premium and current program terms with CMHC or an approved lender before committing capital.
Where to run the numbers
Score a building's tier and see which limit binds with the MLI Select calculator, check the ratio itself with the DSCR calculator, and establish the NOI behind both with the cap rate calculator.
Recourse terms differ by point tier, not just LTV
CMHC's MLI Select page ties a specific recourse designation to two of the three tiers, not to the program as a whole: a recourse option is available at the 50-point tier, and a limited-recourse option is available at the 100-point tier — stated directly on CMHC's MLI Select page. CMHC's page does not state a recourse designation for the 70-point tier. Recourse determines whether the insured lender's claim on default stays limited to the mortgaged property or can extend to the borrower's other assets — a term worth confirming with the lender for your specific tier before modelling exit risk, since CMHC's page names which tier carries which label but does not define the mechanic itself.
Methodology
The points/LTV/amortization/DSCR table is quoted directly from CMHC's own MLI Select program page. Premium PST treatment and OSFI's uninsured-mortgage qualifying rate come from CMHC's and OSFI's own pages; current interest rates come from the Bank of Canada's Valet API; Toronto vacancy/rent context comes from CMHC's October 2025 Rental Market Survey data tables. All retrieved 2026-09-21. No premium-discount percentage is asserted as a CMHC-published figure, since CMHC's own program page does not state one.
Sources
- CMHC — MLI Select program page — accessed 2026-09-21
- CMHC — Mortgage loan insurance cost (PST treatment) — accessed 2026-09-21
- OSFI — Minimum qualifying rate for uninsured mortgages — accessed 2026-09-21
- Bank of Canada — Valet API, target for the overnight rate (V39079) — accessed 2026-09-21
- Bank of Canada — Valet API, prime rate (V80691311) — accessed 2026-09-21
- CMHC — Rental Market Survey Data Tables, Toronto, 2025 — accessed 2026-09-21