Analyze
Bring an address and five numbers. No account needed for the pursue-or-pass read — sign in to save it.
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How the underwriting works
Five numbers in, a pursue-or-pass read out
You bring the address, asking price, unit count, rents, and your down payment. The desk fills the rest from market benchmarks — property tax, insurance, vacancy, and a real repair reserve — and builds net operating income the way a lender would read it, not the way a listing brochure presents it. Every assumption is visible and editable, so when your quote or your rent roll differs, you change the input and re-run.
The stress test is the screen
Canadian residential files are underwritten at the qualifying rate — the higher of your contract rate plus two percentage points, or 5.25%. Analyze shows debt service and DSCR at both rates on one page. A building that clears 1.20x at a 5.3% contract quote can fail at 7.3% qualifying, which is why a deal that looks cheap on cap rate can still die at the lender. Five or more units flips the file to the commercial path, where CMHC MLI Select leverage may apply.
What a run returns
One page: cap rate on the ask, DSCR at contract and qualifying, cash-on-cash on the cheque you actually write, cash to close, and per-door basis against the city screen. For a worked example of the two lender tests, read DSCR vs cash-on-cash, or open a market file for the cap-rate and per-door bands the verdict is scored against.
- How do I underwrite a rental property in Canada?
- Build NOI from in-place rents minus vacancy, taxes, insurance, utilities you pay, management, and repairs. Then test the mortgage two ways: DSCR at your contract rate and again at the qualifying rate — the higher of contract plus 2% or 5.25%. Analyze runs both from an address and five numbers.
- What is the qualifying rate on a rental property?
- The B-20 stress test: the greater of your contract rate plus two percentage points, or 5.25%. It applies to residential files of one to four units. Five-plus-unit buildings use commercial DSCR tests instead.
- Do I need an account to run the numbers?
- No. The pursue-or-pass read is free and works on any Canadian address — paste one from Realtor.ca or type it in. Sign in only if you want to save the run or open a Deal Room.
- Where do the expense assumptions come from?
- City benchmarks — CMHC rents and vacancy where surveyed, editorial estimates elsewhere — all shown in the run and editable. Replace any of them with your quotes and the verdict recomputes.