Occupational Therapists · BC · AB
Assessments, contracts and a caseload — a practice lenders can read.
An occupational therapy practice is one of the harder categories to finance. Not because the practices are weak, but because far fewer lenders write them. The work is knowing which ones do before your file goes anywhere.
Arranged by Ramin Hallaji, licensed mortgage broker, who takes each file person to person to the healthcare-lending specialists at Canada’s major lenders.
The four pillars
What gets financed
The purchase is rarely one number. It is four, and they are underwritten together — by whichever lender is prepared to write this category.
Real estate
The premises, where you are buying rather than leasing them. Most clinics in this category lease, and then this piece simply is not in your deal.
Usually 25 yearsPractice acquisition
The practice itself: the patient base, the bookings, the goodwill and the going concern you are taking over.
Term set on your fileLeasehold & equipment
Assessment and treatment rooms, testing kits and adaptive equipment, and the build-out itself.
Term set on your fileWorking capital
The float through the handover — payroll, and the weeks while contracts and referrals settle under new ownership. Carried on a revolving line, with a corporate credit card beside it.
Revolving lineStraight about this one
Harder to place — and worth saying so
There is no shortage of banks that will finance a dental or a medical practice. Occupational therapy sits outside that group for most of them: it is not one of the professions their healthcare programs were written around, so the file lands with a general commercial team who have no template for it.
That is a placement problem rather than a verdict on your practice. A clinic with real revenue, a real patient base and a sensible price is financeable; it simply will not be financed by whoever happens to hold your business account, and a general commercial application will usually come back as a no.
Which is why there is no leverage figure on this page. The other professions on this desk sit in a defined bank program with published terms. Yours does not, so what a lender will do is decided on your file — the practice’s cash flow, the price, the security, and your own position — and any number you are given here before that work is done would be a guess dressed up as a quote.
What to expect
Last reviewed October 16, 2026
As of October 16, 2026, this desk publishes no leverage figure for occupational therapy: far fewer lenders write it than medical or dental, so what a lender will do is decided on your file, the practice’s cash flow, the price, the security and your own position, and confirmed to you in writing before you commit.
- Leverage
- Case by case
- Lender appetite
- Far narrower than medical or dental
- What it turns on
- The practice’s cash flow and the price
- What we do
- Place it with the few who write it
- Your answer
- In writing, before you commit
Deliberately no percentage here. This desk publishes terms where a program defines them and stays quiet where it does not — a figure you cannot rely on is worse than none.
Affordability
Practice-acquisition estimator
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.
Occupational therapy specifics
What an OT practice actually costs to buy
An OT practice purchase has the same four parts as any practice purchase — the premises if you are buying them, the practice itself, the fit-out, and the working capital to carry you through the handover. What differs is who will lend against them.
There is little hard equipment: rooms, testing kits, the fit-out. What there often is instead is contract revenue — insurer rehabilitation work, workers’-compensation referrals, school-district and health-authority contracts, medical-legal assessments. A contract is the most readable income a lender can be shown: a counterparty, a term, a history. Concentration in one payer is the question to answer before it is asked.
Where these files are won is the practice’s own numbers. A clinic with a stable patient base, associates who are staying, and books that survive a proper read is a financeable business. Bring the financials early and the conversation is short.
Buying in as a partner: partial purchases are common in group OT practices and it is a different file again — you are buying a share of a going concern rather than the whole thing. It can be financed; the agreement between you and the sellers does much of the work, so have it drafted before the lender sees it.
We work alongside your healthcare practice broker, your accountant and your financial adviser — the financing is built around the deal they helped you shape, not the other way round.
Questions
The ones that come up first
Because far fewer lenders write it. Most banks’ healthcare programs were built around physicians, dentists and a short list of others; occupational therapy is not usually on it, so a general application goes to a commercial team with no template for a practice purchase. The practice is not the problem — the panel is.
No. It means the file has to go to the right desk rather than the nearest one. A clinic with real cash flow and a sensible price is financeable; what changes is how many places will look at it, and how much the presentation matters.
Because there is no program that sets one. The other professions on this desk sit inside defined bank programs with published terms, so those pages can state them. Yours does not, so the answer comes from your own file — and is given to you in writing before you commit to anything.
The practice financials — two or three years if they exist — and the asking price or the purchase agreement if there is one. That is enough to tell you quickly whether it is placeable and roughly what shape it would take.
Mostly good. A contract is revenue a lender can read — a counterparty, a term, a renewal history. The watch-item is concentration: one payer behind most of the income will be asked about, so the file answers it up front with the mix, the renewals and the pipeline. Documented beats assumed.
Get started
Bring the deal you are actually looking at
A purchase agreement, a set of practice financials, or a location you are considering for a cold start. Early is better — the structure is easiest to influence before anything is signed.