British Columbia · Alberta · National desk elsewhere
Financing a practice is not a business loan with a stethoscope on it.
The building, the practice, the equipment and the working capital are four different things on four different clocks. Underwritten together, by a lender that lends to your profession on purpose, they commonly need no down payment at all.
Arranged by Ramin Hallaji, licensed mortgage broker — working directly with the healthcare lending teams at Canada’s major banks.
The shape of the deal
- Down payment
- None required
- Real estate
- Usually 25 years, sometimes 30
- Practice, equipment, build-out
- Written over about 12 years
- Opening period
- 1–2 years interest-only
- Prepayment
- Fully open, no penalty
The terms this category commonly reaches, not a quote. What lands on your own file is confirmed to you in writing before you are asked to commit to anything.
Start here
Who are you?
The four pillars are the same whichever of these you practise. What changes is how the business is judged, which lender wants the file, and what you can qualify on before you have a track record.
The premises
The one cost you never stop paying
Most practices rent, and rent is the largest fixed cost that never ends and never falls. The building is the first of the four pillars for a reason: it is the piece with the longest amortisation, the lowest rate, and the only one that leaves you owning something afterwards.
Rent only moves one way
Premises rent rises at every renewal and stops only when you do. Owning turns that same monthly payment into equity in an asset you still hold after you have stopped practising.
The unit you already occupy
The strata unit or ground floor your clinic sits in today is often the cleanest purchase you will ever make. You already know the location works, the patients already know the address, and the fit-out is already yours.
Your address is part of the practice
A practice’s value is tied to where it is. Owning the premises removes the renewal negotiation, the relocation clause, and the risk of being moved on once your patient base is established.
Two loans, sized against each other
The practice debt and the mortgage have to coexist, because each one affects what the other will carry. Arranged together they are sized against one another, rather than colliding at the second application.
The four pillars
One project, four moving parts
Financed separately, each piece is judged on its own and priced for its own risk — and the equipment lease in particular tends to be the expensive one. Financed together, the whole practice is underwritten as a single going concern. That is what makes the full-project structure possible.
Real estate
The building, or your unit in it. Financed against the property, on the longest clock in the deal.
Usually 25 yearsPractice acquisition
The purchase itself — the chart base, the goodwill, the going concern you are buying from the retiring owner.
About 12 yearsLeasehold & equipment
Operatories, imaging, lab and surgical equipment, dispensing automation, and the fit-out of a cold start.
About 12 yearsWorking capital
A revolving corporate line of credit — not a term loan — carrying payroll, inventory and supplies while the appointment book fills up.
Revolving lineHow the borrowing is usually held. These deals are commonly structured across two companies — a holding company for the real estate, an operating company for the practice — with guarantees crossing between them. Worth having your accountant in the room early: that structure has tax consequences well beyond the loan.
Being new is not the problem. Being sent to the wrong lender is.
How it runs
From first conversation to funded
The shape of what you are buying
What the practice is, whether real estate is part of it, the equipment position, and where you are in your career. Half an hour is usually enough to know whether the full-project structure fits.
The file gets built once
Statements, the purchase agreement, your licence and credit position, a valuation where one is needed. Assembled properly the first time, so it can go to more than one desk without being rebuilt.
Placed where it actually fits
Different lenders are strong on different professions. Being independent means the file goes where it is strongest — not to whoever you happen to bank with. Terms in writing before you commit.
For referral partners
Healthcare practice brokers, accountants and financial advisers
Most practice deals are already surrounded by professionals before a lender is ever called — the broker running the sale, the accounting firm that has kept the corporation’s books for years, and the financial adviser who knows what else is on the balance sheet.
We work alongside all three, and we produce a co-branded one-pager your firm can hand directly to a client who is buying: the case study, the four pillars, the lender landscape, your name on it.
Get started
Bring the deal you are actually looking at
A purchase agreement, a set of statements, or just the practice you have been offered and a question about whether it works. Early is better — the structure is easiest to influence before anything is signed.