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Thinking about CMHC MLI Select for an apartment building? It is the most generous multi-unit financing in Canada, with up to 95% loan-to-value, 50-year amortization and premium discounts of up to 30%. In exchange you commit to affordable rents, energy savings or accessibility. Whether that trade pays depends on your rents, your city’s median renter income, the province’s permitted rent increases and how the debt coverage test sizes your loan. Free online calculators tell you how much you can borrow from one year of NOI. This Excel model tells you whether you should, after tax, through the hold and on sale.

Why this model

It runs the same building three ways, with a conventional mortgage, CMHC MLI Standard and CMHC MLI Select, using one calculation engine, so the comparison is exact. It scores your points, applies the terms CMHC gives at 50, 70 and 100 points, prices the affordability commitment year by year, and shows which test sets the loan. Every default is a published Calgary benchmark or a CMHC, CRA or provincial rule, cited on a Sources tab, so you can see where each starting value comes from before you replace it.

CMHC MLI Select rules built in

Points for affordability (50, 70, 100, plus 30 for a 20-year commitment), energy efficiency (20, 35, 50) and accessibility (20, 30), with the share of units each level requires for existing buildings and new construction
Terms by tier: maximum loan-to-value or loan-to-cost, amortization up to 50 years, minimum debt coverage and recourse; below 50 points the model falls back to MLI Standard
CMHC’s premium schedule for applications from July 14, 2025: base rate by loan-to-value for construction or purchase, surcharges for amortization over 25 years, the 10%, 20% or 30% MLI Select discount, application fees and refinance credits
Loan sizing as the lesser of loan-to-value on lending value, loan-to-cost and the debt coverage test at the higher of the contract and floor rate, with the premium included; the binding test is named
Affordable rents capped at 30% of median renter income from CMHC’s table, with permitted annual increases (Alberta’s 2027 figure is 0.1%), returning to market when the commitment ends
Monthly payments with semi-annual compounding as the Interest Act requires, term renewals and an optional refinance

Buy existing or build new

For an existing building: purchase price, land transfer tax and title fees for every province, upfront repairs and the cost of energy or accessibility work for the points. For a new build: hard costs from the Altus cost guide, soft costs, contingency, bonding, Calgary off-site levies, the 100% GST rental rebate, construction funded equity first, capitalized interest, CMHC’s rental-achievement holdback and the Advice 268 advance cap, a lease-up ramp and property tax on an income-approach assessment.

Canadian tax built in

Corporate investment income at Alberta’s 46.7%, an active business rate, an individual rate or a pre-tax view
CCA Class 1 at 4%, or 10% for eligible new purpose-built rentals, with the first-year enhancement; CCA never creates a rental loss; losses carried forward or used against other income
Financing costs and the CMHC premium deducted over five years; construction interest and land carrying costs added to the building cost
Recapture, terminal loss and capital gains at the 50% inclusion rate on sale

Two editions

Feasibility Edition: annual model up to 30 years, 5 to 300 units in up to 8 unit types, existing or new build, the full points, premium, loan sizing, construction and tax logic, the three-way mortgage comparison, deal structures, an income statement, cash flow and balance sheet, after-tax IRR, NPV, cash-on-cash, yield on cost, DCR, a dashboard and integrity checks.
Due Diligence Edition: everything in the Feasibility Edition, plus:
- twelve MLI Select points routes ranked by after-tax IRR, to find the cheapest way to 50, 70 or 100 points
- four editable market scenarios (Downside, Base, Upside, Custom)
- CMHC’s rental-achievement holdback and the Advice 268 advance cap on construction loans
- term renewals at a different rate and a refinance that resizes the loan with the premium credit
- after-tax IRR for every possible sale year
- twelve live sensitivity cases, each fully recalculated after tax, with a tornado chart, break-even occupancy, break-even interest rate and break-even exit cap rate
- an LP/GP investor waterfall with a compounding preferred return, a second hurdle, promote splits, sponsor fees and offering costs

Key outputs

After-tax and pre-tax equity IRR, unlevered IRR, NPV, equity multiple and total profit
Loan amount, loan-to-value, loan-to-cost, the test that sets the loan, premium rate and amount, amortization and debt coverage
Side-by-side results for conventional, MLI Standard and MLI Select on the same building, and the present value of rent given up for affordability
Sources and uses, development cost and yield on cost, construction interest, holdback release and equity required
Dashboard charts: NOI against mortgage payments, after-tax cash flow, mortgage balance, IRR by mortgage, IRR by points route, sensitivity tornado and IRR by sale year

Built to modeling best practice

Inputs, calculations and outputs on separate sheets; color-coded inputs (blue on yellow), formulas (black) and links from deal structures and scenarios (green)
One formula per row across 31 annual columns; CMHC rules and tax constants on a Tables sheet, so a rule change is one edit; no macros, no circular references, no hidden or protected sheets, no external links
Checks sheet confirms the balance sheet balances, sources equal uses, the mortgage is repaid, the loan meets every cap, the live model matches the comparison engine and IRR by sale year agrees with the model, and warns on points below 50, a sale inside the affordability commitment or unused tax losses
Contents sheet with links, step-by-step instructions, a glossary and a full source list

Default assumptions

Defaults describe a 40-unit Calgary low-rise bought for $10,070,000 ($251,750 per unit), a 5.50% going-in cap rate on its as-is NOI from CBRE’s Calgary Class B range, with CMHC’s October 2025 Calgary rents, long-run Calgary rent growth and vacancy from CMHC’s data back to 1990, Calgary’s 2026 tax rate, operating costs benchmarked to Boardwalk REIT and an insured rate of 4.32% (the 5-year Government of Canada yield of 3.54% plus a published 55 to 100 basis-point spread). Owned by a corporation taxed at 46.7%, the MLI Select case at 50 affordability points earns an after-tax IRR of 11.5% (14.6% before tax) on equity of $1,795,559, against 10.2% with MLI Standard on $2,628,704 and 7.1% with a conventional mortgage on $4,351,973. The best of the twelve points routes on this building is A50, 20-yr +E20 at 14.0% after tax. The new-build structure prices a 40-unit wood-frame building from Turner & Townsend’s Calgary costs, published soft-cost and land benchmarks and CMHC’s rents for newer buildings: $13,167,365 in total, a 5.1% yield on cost and an after-tax IRR of 8.9% with 100 MLI Select points from affordability and energy, against 5.7% with conventional debt. The Downside scenario stresses rents, vacancy, rates, costs and the exit cap rate together. Replace the defaults with your own quotes, rent roll and lender terms.

What you get

One Excel workbook (.xlsx) for the edition purchased, built only with functions available since Excel 2010 (no dynamic arrays, no macros)
A free PDF demo showing the main sheets of the Due Diligence Edition

Support and customization

Questions about how the template works are answered by email. Launchwright can also adapt the model to your building, lender, CMHC application or investor offering, quoted at a fixed price in writing before work begins. Contact details are inside the model.

Important

This template is for planning and illustration. CMHC decides eligibility, lending value, points and premiums on each application, and its rules change often; the rules in this version are as published in October 2026. It is not investment, tax, legal or mortgage advice. Confirm the rules with your lender, CMHC and your accountant.

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