At $1,500,000 a home is at the insured-mortgage cap, so mortgage insurance isn’t available and the minimum down payment is 20%.
Income needed
| Down payment | CMHC premium | Payment at the qualifying rate | Income needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum: $300,000 | None | $7,929 | $287,000 |
With the required $300,000 down, the income needed is about $287,000.
Qualifying without insurance
The loan is uninsured, so the contract rate used here is the Bank of Canada’s uninsured average (4.35%) and the stress-test rate is 6.35%. CMHC’s debt limits don’t formally apply to uninsured loans; each lender sets its own, and this page uses CMHC’s 39% as a guide.
Related pages
Sources
The figures and rules on this page come from these sources, last checked against them between September 24, 2026 and September 25, 2026. How we check facts.
- Bank of Canada: Data table
- CMHC: Calculating GDS / TDS
- CMHC: CMHC Purchase
- CMHC: Home Start
- CMHC: CMHC Improvement
- Department of Finance Canada: Technical backgrounder mortgage insurance rules income proposals revised october 14 2016
- Department of Finance Canada: Government announces boldest mortgage reforms in decades to unlock homeownership for more canadians
- Department of Finance Canada: Straight switches and portfolio insurance
- Department of Finance Canada: Boldest mortgage reforms in decades come into force today
- Financial Consumer Agency of Canada: Down payment
- Financial Consumer Agency of Canada: Buying home
- OSFI: Minimum qualifying rate for uninsured mortgages
4 more sources
- OSFI: Final Revised Guideline B-20: Residential Mortgage Underwriting Practices and Procedures
- OSFI: Amendments to the minimum qualifying rate for uninsured mortgages
- OSFI: OSFI exempts uninsured mortgage straight switches from the prescribed MQR andβ¦
- OSFI: Loan-to-income limits for uninsured mortgage portfolios