CMHC MLI Select
MLI Select, for multi-unit residential.
CMHC's MLI Select programme applies to multi-unit residential properties, rewards buildings that meet targets for energy efficiency, affordability or accessibility — and qualifies you on the property and your equity rather than your personal income.
What the programme does
MLI Select scores a project against those three criteria. The stronger the commitment you make, the more favourable the insured financing terms available on the deal.
It is a genuinely different exercise from a residential mortgage. Qualification rests on the property and the equity going into it rather than on your personal income and credit score — the building has to carry itself. Lenders still look at net worth, liquidity and whether you have run a building before, but personal income is not the gate it is on a residential file.
How I work it
By treating it as the underwriting exercise it is: understanding what the property can commit to, what evidence CMHC will want, and how that shapes the financing available.
If your project isn't a fit for the programme, you'll be told that early rather than after weeks of work.
This is for you if
- You're buying or refinancing multi-unit residential
- You have equity to put in, but your personal income wouldn't carry a residential mortgage of the same size
- Your building meets or could meet efficiency or affordability targets
- You want to understand whether MLI Select applies to you
- You're weighing insured against conventional financing
Think this is your situation?
Send me the details and I'll tell you straight away where you stand — including if the answer is that it needs work first.