Physicians · BC · AB
The commercial side of a physician’s balance sheet.
Your mortgage is one conversation. The clinic you practise in — buying into it, building it out, or owning the building itself — is a different one, on different terms, at a different desk.
Arranged by Ramin Hallaji, licensed mortgage broker — working directly with the healthcare lending teams at Canada’s major banks.
The four pillars
What gets financed
The purchase is rarely one number. It is four, and they are underwritten together — which is exactly why the down payment can come out at nothing.
Real estate
The clinic premises or the medical office building — among the strongest real estate a lender can take on a healthcare file.
Usually 25 yearsPractice acquisition
Buying into or buying out a clinic: the patient panel, the roster and the going concern.
About 12 yearsLeasehold & equipment
Exam-room fit-out, diagnostic and procedural equipment, records systems, and the build-out of a new clinic.
About 12 yearsWorking capital
A revolving corporate line of credit — not a term loan — covering payroll for nursing and admin staff, supplies, and the float while a new panel or location fills.
Revolving lineThe shape of the deal
Two clocks, one project — and no down payment
For licensed healthcare professionals this category commonly reaches full-project financing: the building on an amortisation of twenty-five years in most cases — occasionally thirty — with the practice, equipment and build-out written over about twelve. The expensive, faster-amortising piece clears first, so the heaviest year of the loan is the first one, not the tenth.
A year or two of interest-only is usually available while the appointment book fills — and the facility is commonly fully open, so any part of it, the mortgage included, can be cleared early without penalty.
These deals are commonly held across two companies — a holding company for the real estate, an operating company for the practice, with guarantees crossing between them. Have your accountant in the room early; that structure has tax consequences well beyond the loan.
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.
Affordability
Practice-acquisition estimator
Set the clinic’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.
Physician specifics
Two files, kept apart on purpose
Physicians are the one profession here who routinely have two entirely separate financing lives. The residential mortgage is its own specialism, with its own lenders and its own rules. The clinic is commercial lending, underwritten against the practice and the premises rather than against you.
They are best kept as two files, arranged deliberately. The most common expensive mistake is letting the clinic borrowing sit at whichever bank happens to hold the personal accounts, because it is convenient — convenience being, as a rule, the most expensive feature of a commercial loan.
Where a physician file is genuinely distinctive is the real estate. A medical office building with a stable roster of clinical tenants is durable, specialised property — and the twenty-five-year amortisation on that piece is what makes owning the premises materially cheaper over time than leasing them.
Buying a home as well? The residential side is covered in detail at physicianmortgage.ca. Same broker, deliberately separate files.
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
A physician mortgage is residential lending against your income and your home. This is commercial lending against a practice and its premises. The underwriting, the lenders and the terms are all different, which is why they are best run as two deliberate files rather than one bundled relationship.
Your share of the going concern, against the clinic’s cash flow and your position in it. The partnership agreement — especially its departure and valuation provisions — does more to shape the financing than the price does, so have it available early.
Yes, and it is one of the stronger real estate propositions in this category. Your own occupancy plus a roster of clinical tenants is durable income, and the building sits on the long amortisation while any practice or fit-out borrowing runs on the shorter one.
Not necessarily. A clinic buy-in is underwritten against the clinic — its cash flow, its patient panel and the price of the share you are buying — with your licence behind it. Being newly in practice is ordinary for a first buy-in and is not the thing that decides the file.
Get started
Bring the deal you are actually looking at
A buy-in offer, a set of clinic financials, a building you are considering, or a build-out you are costing. Early is better — the structure is easiest to influence before anything is signed.