British Columbia · Alberta · National desk elsewhere
Buy the practice. Often with no down payment.
The premises, the practice, the equipment and the working capital — one project, financed through the healthcare desks of Canada’s major banks, arranged end to end. The first answer is free, and it takes one business day.
Arranged by Ramin Hallaji, licensed mortgage broker, who takes each file person to person to the healthcare-lending specialists at Canada’s major lenders. $150,000,000+ funded across 250+ files.
The shape of the deal
- Down payment
- Commonly none
- Real estate
- Usually 25 years, sometimes 30
- Practice, equipment, build-out
- Written over about 12 years
- Opening period
- 1–2 years interest-only
- Prepayment
- Open on variable, closed on fixed
The terms this category commonly reaches, not a quote — and “commonly” is doing real work. Some lenders will finance 100% of the building and still ask for a contribution against the goodwill and the leaseholds. What lands on your own file is confirmed to you in writing before you are asked to commit to anything.
At a glance
What the program commonly reaches — beside a standard commercial mortgage
As of October 16, 2026, licensed physicians, dentists, veterinarians, optometrists and pharmacists in BC and Alberta commonly finance a practice purchase or start-up to 100% of project cost, most often with no down payment: the practice, equipment and build-out are written over about 12 years, the real estate over 25 years and sometimes 30, with 1–2 years of interest-only at the start; on a variable rate the facility is fully open with no penalty, on a fixed rate it is closed with a blended amortization. A standard owner-occupied commercial mortgage, by comparison, usually funds to about 75–80% of the building’s value, on the same 25-year amortization, sometimes 30, with the same open-on-variable, closed-on-fixed rule, and it is carried by 2 to 3 years of financials and your personal net worth rather than by your licence.
Physicians, dentists, veterinarians, optometrists and pharmacists sit inside bank programs written around their professions. The terms those programs commonly reach are printed here, dated, beside what a conventional owner-occupied commercial mortgage does, so the difference is a number rather than a claim. The other professions on this desk are placed on their file, which is why their pages carry no leverage figure.
Every figure is confirmed in writing on your own file before you commit to anything. To see what a particular deal carries, the clinic calculators size the practice and the premises together.
Practice financing at a glance
Last reviewed October 16, 2026
| Term | Standard commercial | Healthcare program |
|---|---|---|
| Down payment | Usually 20–25%, less on strong files | Commonly none |
| How much of the project is financed | To about 75–80% of the building’s value | Commonly 100% of project cost |
| Real estate | Usually 25 years, sometimes 30 | Usually 25 years, sometimes 30 |
| Practice, equipment, build-out | Separate equipment and leasehold loans | Written over about 12 years |
| Opening period | Amortizes from the first payment | 1–2 years interest-only |
| Prepayment | Variable: fully open, no penalty. Fixed: closed, blended amortization. | Variable: fully open, no penalty. Fixed: closed, blended amortization. |
| What carries the file | 2 to 3 years of financials and your personal net worth | Your licence first, then 2 to 3 years of financials or projections; net worth counts for less |
The terms this category commonly reaches, not a quote — and “commonly” is doing real work. Some lenders will finance 100% of the building and still ask for a contribution against the goodwill and the leaseholds. What lands on your own file is confirmed to you in writing before you are asked to commit to anything. The standard column is the conventional owner-occupied commercial mortgage as published on mortgageguru.ca.
Already holding a bank offer?
Get a second opinion before you sign it.
You would tell a patient to get one before surgery. Your financing deserves the same. Send what your bank offered — or just the deal you are looking at — and within one business day you will know whether it can be beaten, by roughly how much, and what the right desk would want to see.
And if your bank’s offer is genuinely good, you will be told to take it — in writing. That answer costs nothing either.
The promise
- First read
- One business day
- Cost
- Nothing
- Obligation
- None
- If your bank’s deal is good
- You’ll be told to take it
- Your bank
- Hears nothing without your say-so
No offer in hand yet? Send the deal anyway — same answer, same clock, counted in business days from when your message lands.
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 main three
Also written into the bank programs
The harder files — case by case, placed properly
Or start from what you are financing
The premises
The one cost you never stop paying
Most practices rent, and rent is the largest fixed cost that never ends and rarely falls. The building is the first of the four pillars for a reason: it is the piece with the longest amortization, the lowest rate, and the one that leaves you owning the premises afterwards.
Rent mostly moves one way
Premises rent tends to rise 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.
A funded file: about $1.8 million for a $770,000 North Shore clinic purchase. The premises, the build-out and the working capital were financed as one project, with no down payment: a $770,000 real estate loan on a 25-year amortization, an $800,000 leasehold-improvement loan on a 12-year amortization and a $200,000 operating line, all three at prime minus 0.25% in 2026, plus a $50,000 corporate card on regular card terms. Both term loans are fully open and interest-only for their first two years. The roughly $1.8 million is the whole project, not the mortgage’s loan-to-value. Read the full case study on mortgageguru.ca.
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 yearsFinancing the premisesPractice acquisition
The purchase itself — the chart base, the goodwill, the going concern you are buying from the retiring owner.
About 12 yearsFinancing a practice purchaseLeasehold & equipment
Operatories, imaging, lab and surgical equipment, dispensing automation, and the fit-out of a cold start.
About 12 yearsFinancing leasehold improvementsFinancing equipmentWorking capital
A revolving corporate line of credit — not a term loan — carrying payroll, inventory and supplies while the appointment book fills up. A corporate credit card can sit beside the line.
Revolving lineFinancing working capitalHow 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.
White-glove service
You treat the patients. We do the rest.
Buying a practice pulls in a dozen professions at once, and most buyers are assembling that team for the first time while still working a full clinical week. We bring the whole team — or work with the one you already have.
The business plan
The document every lender asks for and few buyers have written before. We build it with you, around the deal you are actually doing.
The build-out
Contractors for the leasehold improvements, and the quotes in the form a lender will accept rather than a number on the back of an envelope.
The valuations
Commercial appraisers for the premises, and practice brokers and real estate agents who work in healthcare rather than in general commercial.
The professionals
Accountants and lawyers who have structured practice purchases before — the holdco question, the share-versus-asset question, the agreement itself.
Already have your own people? Good — we work with them. Your accountant, your lawyer, your practice broker: we brief them, take their input and keep them in the loop, rather than asking you to start again with ours. The point is not who is on the team. It is that you are not the one coordinating it.
The file itself
Your bank sees an application. A lender should see a case.
A recent submission from this desk ran 24 pages before a lender ever saw it. Not padding — structure:
The number first
Debt-service coverage measured the way the lender measures it, and checked before they ask. The last such file cleared with every credit line fully drawn and revenue 19% below plan.
The structure
A holding company for the premises, an operating company for the practice, the lease between them — designed, and incorporated with the lawyers, before the application exists.
The equity, evidenced
Sources and uses to the dollar, the down payment shown sitting in the account. In place, not promised.
Your CV, rebuilt
Written for a credit officer — which is not what a job application says.
The market, verified
Demographics from Statistics Canada, every competitor mapped and measured, the zoning and strata bylaws checked.
The weaknesses, disclosed
Each stated up front with its answer attached. A surprised lender is a lender saying no.
Then it reaches the right person, warm. Files from this desk travel person-to-person. Our connections inside each lender are the very best there — built file by file, over years — and every submission is discussed with that person before it is formally made. Your file never arrives cold. Who picks up when we call stays our business: that discretion is part of what you are hiring.
Affordability
Practice Purchase Calculator (what the practice could carry)
Set the practice’s cash flow and your own assumptions; the estimator shows the borrowing the cash flow could support. It quotes nobody’s pricing — the rate is your input.
Arithmetic on figures you supplied — not an approval, a pre-approval, or an offer. Real estate in a project runs on its own longer clock and can carry further than this single-term illustration.
They arrive in the message box, editable — straight answer inside one business day.
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.
Questions
The ones that come up first
Yes — this is the case the category was built for. A practice purchase is underwritten against the practice: its cash flow, its patient base and the price you are paying, with your licence behind it. Having no filed returns of your own is normal for a first purchase and is not what decides the file.
Commonly no. Financed together — the premises on their own long clock, the practice, the equipment and the working capital alongside — these projects frequently need nothing down. That is what this category commonly reaches rather than a promise about your file; what yours needs is confirmed in writing before you commit to anything.
Not on its own. The purchase is carried by the practice — its cash flow, its patient base and the price. Existing personal commitments are part of the picture and they reduce the room, which is why the estimator above has a slider for exactly that, but they are not the thing that decides the file.
Less than you would expect. What is being judged is the business you are buying and the price you are paying for it, not an earnings history you have not had time to build. Being new is not the problem — being sent to a lender who does not write this kind of file is.
Read a funded file, North Shore medical clinic financing, or the wider healthcare financing FAQ on Mortgage Guru.
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.