Canadian CMHC insurance calculator

If you're putting less than 20% down on a Canadian home, you're going to encounter CMHC mortgage insurance. There's the headline question (how much does it cost?), the secondary question (is it a tax, a fee, or a service?), and the question almost nobody answers: why is it required in the first place?

This guide takes them in order, then walks through the dollar implications: the tier ladder, the three PST provinces (it used to be four), the $1.5M home-price cap, and the long tail of compounding interest on a premium that gets quietly rolled into your mortgage.

What CMHC actually does

CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, was created by an Act of Parliament in December 1945, originally as the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, with a mission to house returning World War II veterans. It got its current name in 1979. Its modern mandate, written into the National Housing Act, is to "promote housing affordability and choice, to facilitate access to, and competition and efficiency in the provision of, housing finance."

In practice, CMHC does three things: it insures mortgages on behalf of lenders, it researches and publishes housing-market data, and it administers federal housing programs. The insurance role is the one that touches you directly when you're buying.

When you put less than 20% down on a home, your lender's risk profile gets worse: a small downturn in property values can leave them owed more than the home is worth. To make the loan possible at all, that risk has to go somewhere. CMHC mortgage default insurance is what absorbs it: if you default, CMHC pays the lender's loss. The insurance protects the lender, not you. You pay the premium because without it, the lender wouldn't write the loan in the first place.

Per CMHC's 2024 Annual Report, CMHC had $440 billion in insurance in force at year-end 2024, up $26 billion year over year. It supported 49,000-plus owner-occupied units last year and 283,000-plus multi-unit rental units. Mortgages in arrears stayed at 0.30% of the insured book. CMHC's stated vision, in the words of its CEO Coleen Volk, is "a Canada where everyone has a home that they can afford and that meets their needs."

That's the policy frame. The next sections cover what it costs you specifically.

The tier ladder, in plain English

CMHC publishes premium rates as a percentage of your loan amount, organized by loan-to-value. LTV is just your mortgage amount divided by the home price, expressed as a percentage. The higher the LTV (the less you put down), the higher the rate.

The published tiers:

A worked example will make this concrete. Buy a $500,000 home with $25,000 down (5%). Your loan is $475,000, your LTV is 95%, and you land in the top tier. Your premium is 4.00% × $475,000 = $19,000. That gets rolled into your mortgage and paid down over the amortization. You don't write a $19,000 cheque on closing day.

What's the difference one tier makes? Try the same home with $50,000 down (10%). LTV drops to 90%, you're in the 3.10% tier, premium is 3.10% × $450,000 = $13,950. Same property, $25,000 more down, $5,050 less in premium. And the lower-LTV mortgage will accrue less interest over time too, since you're financing a smaller principal.

This is why the calculator's tier-rate line is in the result panel: a small move in your down payment can move you down a tier and save a real amount.

The 30-year option (and its 0.20% catch)

For most of the last decade, CMHC capped insured amortizations at 25 years. That changed on December 15, 2024, under what the federal government called "the boldest mortgage reforms in decades". Two changes mattered:

1. 30-year insured amortization is now available to first-time home buyers and to buyers of newly-built homes. Other insured borrowers still cap at 25 years.

2. The insured-mortgage price cap was raised from $1 million to $1.5 million, allowing insured high-ratio mortgages on more expensive homes.

The 30-year option lowers your monthly payment because you have five extra years to pay off the same balance. CMHC charges a 0.20% surcharge on top of the tier rate to reflect the higher-risk longer term.

The calculator's first-time-buyer and new-build toggles gate the 30-year option. Flip them on or off to compare both scenarios head to head, and check the resulting payment in the mortgage payment calculator.

The PST trap nobody warns you about

Three provinces tax the CMHC premium itself: Ontario at 8%, Quebec at 9% (a special rate on insurance premiums, not the standard 9.975% QST), and Saskatchewan at 6%. Manitoba historically charged 7%, but it suspended the tax in 2020 as part of COVID-19 relief and hasn't reinstated it. The other nine provinces and territories charge nothing.

The trap: the tax cannot be financed into the mortgage. It's payable in cash on closing day, on top of your down payment. From CMHC's own page: "the sales tax can't be added to the loan amount." Buyers in the three PST provinces routinely arrive at their lawyer's office a thousand dollars or two short of what they need because the tax isn't reflected in their mortgage budget.

CMHC vs Sagen vs Canada Guaranty

CMHC is the federal Crown corporation. Its private competitors are Sagen (formerly Genworth Canada) and Canada Guaranty. All three insure essentially the same product, and all three charge identical headline premium rates on the same tier schedule.

So why three insurers? The lender chooses. When you submit a high-ratio mortgage application, the lender routes it to whichever insurer's underwriting is most likely to approve. CMHC tends to handle the bulk of routine cases; Sagen and Canada Guaranty often pick up the deals CMHC declines for property type, debt-service ratio, credit history, or self-employment income reasons that fail CMHC's underwriting but pass theirs.

Approximate transactional market shares as of late 2025: CMHC ~50%, Sagen ~30%, Canada Guaranty ~20%. Sagen alone wrote $21.34 billion of new transactional insurance in 2024, up 25% year over year. For your purposes as a borrower, the choice happens behind the scenes, and you pay the same rate either way. The calculator labels its math as "CMHC" because that's what most people google, but the numbers apply to all three.

The $1.5M cap and the borrowed-down-payment penalty

Two edge cases routinely surprise borrowers.

The $1.5M home-price cap. CMHC will not insure a mortgage on a home priced above $1.5 million, regardless of your down payment. (The cap was raised from $1 million on December 15, 2024.) If you're buying above that line, you'll need at least 20% down for a conventional, uninsured mortgage. Above $2 million, even 20% may not be enough at most lenders: you're in jumbo-mortgage territory with private terms.

The borrowed-down-payment penalty. CMHC's standard top-tier rate (90.01-95% LTV) is 4.00%. But if your down payment comes from a non-traditional down payment source, meaning borrowed, like an unsecured line of credit, a credit card, or an unsecured personal loan, the rate jumps to 4.50%. Money from your savings, RRSPs (via the Home Buyers' Plan), gifts from immediate family, or proceeds from selling another property all count as traditional and don't trigger the surcharge. The calculator has a checkbox for the non-traditional case so you can see the exact difference.

Both rules trace back to CMHC's risk model: highly leveraged buyers borrowing to buy with borrowed money is a pattern the agency caps deliberately, partly because past cycles taught policymakers that those loans default at higher rates than ones with savings-based down payments.

Frequently asked questions

Does CMHC mortgage insurance protect me as the borrower?

No. The insurance protects the lender against your default. If you default, CMHC pays the lender's loss; CMHC then pursues you for the shortfall. As a borrower you get nothing directly from the insurance. What you do get is the loan in the first place: without CMHC's backing, lenders typically wouldn't write a high-ratio mortgage, full stop.

How is the CMHC premium actually paid?

It's added to your mortgage principal. So if your base loan is $475,000 and the premium is $19,000, you actually borrow $494,000 and pay it down over the full amortization at your contract interest rate. You never write a separate cheque for the premium itself. But you do pay PST on it in cash at closing if you live in Ontario, Quebec, or Saskatchewan.

Can I avoid CMHC by putting 19% down and getting a HELOC for the rest?

Not really. CMHC and lenders look at the total leverage on the property, not just the first mortgage. Pairing a 19.99% down payment with a HELOC for the last 0.01% to claim a "conventional" 20%-down mortgage is something underwriters watch for. Some borrowers do split high-ratio loans into a 65% conventional first mortgage plus a smaller second to keep the insured portion in the lower-tier band, but that's lender-specific and not guaranteed to save money once second-mortgage rates and fees are factored in.

What if I'm self-employed or new to Canada?

All three insurers (CMHC, Sagen, Canada Guaranty) have programs for self-employed borrowers, new-to-Canada applicants, and other non-standard situations. The base premium tiers are usually the same; the underwriting is what differs. A mortgage broker who works with all three insurers can route your application to whichever is most likely to approve.

Can I get my CMHC premium refunded if I sell early?

Generally no. The premium is one-time and is not refundable on early sale, refinancing, or paying the mortgage off ahead of schedule. The exception is the partial portability some lenders offer that lets you carry the insurance to a new property without paying again. Terms are specific to the lender and the new mortgage.

Is CMHC insurance the same as home insurance?

No. They are completely different products. CMHC default insurance protects the lender from your default. Home (or property) insurance protects you and the lender from physical damage to the property itself. Title insurance is yet a third product, protecting against title defects. Most lenders require all three, in different combinations depending on the property and province.

Does the 30-year amortization actually save me money?

It lowers your monthly payment but raises your total interest paid because you're amortizing for five more years. It also adds a 0.20% surcharge to your CMHC premium. Whether it "saves" anything depends on what you mean by save: month-to-month cash flow, yes; lifetime interest, no. Use the mortgage payment calculator alongside this one to see both numbers for your specific scenario.

Where do CalcNorth's numbers come from?

Tier rates and the surcharge come from CMHC's published premium-information page. PST rates come from each province's revenue authority, cross-referenced against the Ratehub explainer that catalogues which provinces still charge. Math is verified against CMHC's worked examples and Sagen's broker-tools to the cent. We don't make up numbers and we don't massage them.