A mortgage payment is one number built out of a dozen decisions: how much you put down, whether the loan is insured, how the rate compounds, how often you pay and how long you stretch it out. The calculator above handles each of those the way a Canadian lender does. What follows explains what every one of those choices really costs, with numbers taken from the Lower Mainland market in the fall of 2026.
Getting a number you can trust
Start with the price you expect to pay, which isn't always the asking price. Plenty of Lower Mainland homes are selling a little under list right now, while busy pockets (townhouses in Willoughby, anything within a short walk of a new SkyTrain station) can still go over. If you're looking at a particular home on EstateBlock, the sold history for that building or street tells you more than the asking number does.
For the down payment, use the money you'll have left after closing costs, not your whole savings balance. Property transfer tax, legal fees, the inspection, title insurance and moving all come out of the same pot, and lenders generally want to see about 1.5% of the price set aside for closing on top of the down payment. For buyers who aren't exempt, BC's transfer tax on its own can go well past that 1.5%. Our property transfer tax calculator will tell you where you stand.
For the rate, plug in a real quote if you've got one. If you don't, the default is a fair starting point for an insured 5-year fixed. Set the rate type to variable when you're pricing a variable mortgage, because the calculator compounds the two differently, and that's covered in the next section.
The two checkboxes do more than they look like they do. Ticking first-time buyer or new build is what makes a 30-year insured amortization possible. If you leave both unticked, choose 30 years and put down less than 20%, the calculator will flag it and use 25 years instead. That's exactly what a lender would do.
Canadian mortgage math isn't American mortgage math
Most mortgage calculators you'll turn up in a search were written for the US market, and they quietly assume interest compounds every month. That's not how it works here. The federal Interest Act requires a Canadian mortgage to state its rate calculated yearly or half-yearly, not in advance, and fixed-rate lending settled on half-yearly a long time ago. Variable-rate mortgages are less uniform. Many lenders compound them monthly, and that's what this calculator does when you switch to variable.
On the default scenario, a $741,392 insured mortgage at 4.34% over 25 years, semi-annual compounding gives a monthly payment of $4,037.72. A US-style calculator gives $4,053.86 for the same inputs.
Sixteen dollars a month sounds trivial. Over 300 payments it adds up to about $4,800, and it means the US calculator is also slightly wrong about your balance at renewal and about the budget you're building around the payment.
If your bank's figure is a few dollars off ours, rounding is usually the reason, since lenders round the periodic rate to different decimal places. If it's $15 or $20 a month off on a loan this size, the tool you used almost certainly compounds monthly.
One more thing that trips people up on closing day: the interest adjustment. If you close on the 12th and your first regular payment is on the 1st of the following month, the lender charges interest for the gap. Some deduct it from the mortgage advance, which means your lawyer asks you for a little more money than you planned. It's normally a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand, depending on the loan and how many days are involved, and it's worth asking your lender about before you book the payment date.
Accelerated bi-weekly: a small change with a big result
Payment frequency is the cheapest decision you'll make about your mortgage, and the naming makes it easy to get wrong.
Regular bi-weekly takes a year's worth of payments and divides it into 26. On our default loan that works out to $1,861.77 every two weeks. You pay a bit more often, so interest gets charged on a slightly smaller balance, and over 25 years you save about $1,200. Nice, but it won't change your life.
Accelerated bi-weekly takes your monthly payment and cuts it in half: $2,018.86 every two weeks. There are 26 bi-weekly periods in a year and only 24 half-months, so you end up paying the equivalent of 13 monthly payments a year instead of 12, and the whole extra payment goes to principal.
| Default loan, $741,392 at 4.34% | Payment | Paid off in | Total interest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $4,037.72 | 25 years | $469,923 |
| Semi-monthly | $2,017.05 | 25 years | $468,840 |
| Bi-weekly | $1,861.77 | 25 years | $468,756 |
| Accelerated bi-weekly | $2,018.86 | 21 yrs, 9 mo | $400,204 |
| Accelerated weekly | $1,009.43 | 21 yrs, 9 mo | $399,424 |
So accelerated bi-weekly saves roughly $69,700 in interest and takes more than three years off the mortgage, for $157 more every two weeks than plain bi-weekly. Accelerated weekly lands in almost the same place. If you're paid weekly, go weekly; the math barely cares.
Semi-monthly, on the 1st and 15th, is the option people pick by accident because it sounds like bi-weekly. It isn't accelerated, and it behaves almost exactly like monthly.
A practical note from the closing side of things: match the first payment date to your payday. A bi-weekly payment that comes out the day before your paycheque lands is a very good way to turn a smart plan into an NSF fee.
25 years or 30?
Since December 15, 2024, first-time buyers (on any insured purchase, resale or new) and anyone buying a newly built home can take a 30-year amortization on an insured mortgage. Everyone else putting down less than 20% is capped at 25 years. Once you're at 20% down you're outside the insured rules, and most lenders will write a conventional mortgage over 30 years anyway.
Here's what that choice looks like on the default numbers. The 30-year version carries a 0.20% surcharge on the insurance premium.
| $799,000 home, 10% down, 4.34% | 25 years | 30 years |
|---|---|---|
| CMHC premium | 3.10% ($22,292) | 3.30% ($23,730) |
| Monthly payment | $4,037.72 | $3,676.61 |
| Balance after 5 years | $649,179 | $675,087 |
| Total interest if you never prepay | $469,923 | $580,749 |
The 30-year option costs about $361 a month less and roughly $110,800 more in interest if you ride it out to the end. It also leaves you owing about $26,000 more when the first five-year term is up, which matters if there's a chance you'll sell or refinance around then.
There's a middle path that doesn't get talked about enough. Take the 30-year amortization for the lower required payment, which also helps a little when you qualify, then set your actual payment at the 25-year level or use your prepayment privileges to get there. On these numbers, a 30-year mortgage paid at $4,045.55 a month is gone in exactly 25 years. Compared with a straight 25-year loan, the whole extra cost is about $2,350: the $1,438 surcharge on the premium plus interest on it. What that money buys is the right to drop back to $3,677 a month if a job change, a new baby or a strata special levy squeezes the budget. With 20% or more down there's no surcharge at all, though some lenders do price 30-year conventional loans a little higher.
The version we'd steer people away from is using 30 years to stretch into the biggest purchase price the bank will approve. Then the lower payment isn't a cushion anymore. It's the whole budget.
The CMHC premium rides on the loan
Put down less than 20% and the mortgage has to be insured against default, either by CMHC or by one of the two private insurers, Sagen and Canada Guaranty. Their premium schedules are practically identical. You don't pay the premium with a cheque. It's added to the mortgage, and you pay interest on it for the life of the loan.
| Down payment | Premium, as % of the loan |
|---|---|
| 5% to 9.99% | 4.00% |
| 10% to 14.99% | 3.10% |
| 15% to 19.99% | 2.80% |
| 20% or more | No insurance needed |
The tiers have hard edges, and those edges are worth money. On the $799,000 default, putting down $79,900 (exactly 10%) gets you the 3.10% tier and a $22,292 premium. Put down $79,000 instead and you drop into the 4.00% tier, and the premium jumps to $28,800. That's $6,508 more on the loan to save $900 of cash. If you're anywhere near a tier line, a small top-up from the Home Buyers' Plan or a family gift can pay for itself many times over.
Two BC details that matter. First, BC doesn't charge provincial sales tax on the premium. Buyers in Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan have to pay that tax in cash at closing, and a lot of what you'll read online was written for Toronto buyers, so if you see it mentioned you can ignore it here. Second, the minimum down payment is tiered: 5% of the first $500,000 and 10% of whatever sits between $500,000 and $1.5 million. On a $1.2 million Burnaby townhouse that's $25,000 plus $70,000, so $95,000.
Then there's the cliff. Insured mortgages stop at a $1.5 million purchase price. At $1,499,000 the minimum down payment is $124,900. At $1,500,000 it's $300,000. If you're shopping right around that line in Burnaby, Richmond or on the North Shore, a thousand dollars of price can more than double the cash you need. Keep it in mind before writing an offer on a house listed at $1,529,000 and hoping to get it under.
For every tier and the math behind it, the CMHC insurance calculator goes further than we have room for here.
Four homes, four payments
"Average" doesn't help much when you're trying to buy a specific place, so we took four round prices close to real asking prices on the EstateBlock map in the last week of September 2026 and ran each one at 4.34%.
| Home and price | Minimum down | Monthly, min. down, 25 yrs | Monthly, min. down, 30 yrs | Monthly, 20% down, 25 yrs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-bed condo, Langley $549,000 | $29,900 | $2,940 | $2,677 | $2,392 |
| 2-bed condo, Burnaby $749,900 | $49,990 | $3,964 | $3,610 | $3,267 |
| Townhouse, Langley $929,000 | $67,900 | $4,877 | $4,441 | $4,048 |
| Detached, Surrey $1,299,000 | $104,900 | $6,763 | $6,158 | $5,660 |
A couple of things jump out. On the Langley townhouse, going from the minimum to 20% down cuts the payment by $829 a month, but it takes $117,900 more cash to do it. Whether that's a good trade depends on what else the money would be doing for you, and our rent vs buy calculator is built for exactly that question.
And on the Surrey house, the 30-year option takes $605 off the monthly payment. For a first-time buyer that can be the difference between qualifying and not, which is why it's worth checking the numbers on our affordability and stress test calculator before falling for a house.
The payment is only part of the monthly bill
When a lender checks your debt ratios, it counts the mortgage payment, property tax, heating and half of any strata fee. Your bank account counts all of it, plus insurance and upkeep. Open the tax, strata and insurance section of the calculator and you'll get an all-in monthly number.
Property tax. The listing will show the previous year's gross taxes, and that's the number to use rather than a guess. Keep in mind it's the gross figure before the BC Home Owner Grant, which most people living in their own home can claim to take a few hundred dollars off (more if you're 65 or older). New builds are the exception. A presale's listed tax is often for the land or an unfinished building, and your first full-year bill will be higher.
Strata fees. Also on the listing. Before you trust that number, read the Form B information certificate and the depreciation report. A low fee in an older building with a thin contingency reserve isn't cheap, it's deferred. Envelope, roof and elevator work in 1990s and early-2000s buildings regularly produces special levies in the five figures per unit.
Insurance. Condo owners insure their contents, their improvements and their share of the strata deductible, and that last one deserves attention. Water-damage deductibles in many BC buildings now run anywhere from $25,000 to well over $100,000, and your policy should cover that amount. Houses cost a lot more to insure, and in parts of the Fraser Valley flood exposure moves the price. The flood and climate layer on each EstateBlock listing is worth a look before you start collecting quotes.
One-time costs like the transfer tax, legal fees and GST on new construction don't belong in the monthly number, but they do come out of the same savings as your down payment. The closing cost calculator totals them up.
Plan for renewal, not just for closing
Your rate is locked for the term, usually five years, but the amortization keeps running. At renewal you get whatever rate the market is offering on whatever balance you still owe, and that's where payment shock comes from.
On the default mortgage, after five years you still owe about $649,200. By then you've paid roughly $150,000 in interest and $92,200 in principal. Here's the payment over the remaining 20 years at four renewal rates:
| Rate at renewal | Monthly payment | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 3.34% | $3,704 | $334 less |
| 4.34% | $4,038 | no change |
| 5.34% | $4,386 | $348 more |
| 6.34% | $4,748 | $710 more |
The calculator runs the same four scenarios for whatever you put in. If the bottom row would break your budget, that's a lot more useful to know before you buy than in year five.
There's some good news on this front. Since November 2024, uninsured borrowers who move to a new lender at renewal without adding to the loan no longer have to requalify under the stress test, and insured mortgages already worked that way. That means you can actually shop your renewal instead of signing whatever your current lender mails you. Lenders know most people don't bother, and the first offer in that renewal letter tends to reflect it.
Fixed or variable in late 2026
We don't know where rates are headed, and neither does anyone giving you a confident forecast. What we can tell you is where things sit. The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25% on September 2, 2026, its seventh hold in a row, which keeps big-bank prime at 4.45%. The best insured 5-year variable rates are around 3.25% to 3.40%, and the best insured 5-year fixed rates are around 4.29% to 4.34%. That's roughly a one-point head start for variable.
The forecasts don't agree with each other. In late September, bond markets were pricing in gradual increases to the policy rate through 2027 and 2028. TD Economics expected no change through the end of 2027. National Bank expected 2.75% by the end of 2027. Fixed rates follow the 5-year Government of Canada bond yield rather than the Bank of Canada, and yields rose over the summer along with oil prices and tariff worries.
A few things matter more than any forecast:
- Ask which kind of variable you're getting. Some lenders keep your payment the same and let the interest share float. If rates climb far enough you reach the trigger rate, where the payment no longer covers the interest and the lender will want the payment raised. Others adjust the payment every time prime moves, which is more honest but less predictable.
- Breaking a variable mortgage usually costs three months' interest. Breaking a fixed mortgage at a big bank can cost several times that because of the interest rate differential calculation. Our mortgage penalty calculator shows the gap on your own numbers.
- If there's a real chance you'll sell inside five years, whether that's a growing family, a job move or a presale that completes before your term is up, the penalty difference can matter more than the rate difference.
Set the calculator to variable and try a rate one point higher than today's to see what you'd be signing up for if the forecasts calling for increases turn out right.
Prepayment privileges are worth reading
Almost every mortgage lets you pay extra without a penalty, up to a limit. The usual pattern is a lump sum of 10% to 20% of the original principal once a year, plus the right to raise your regular payment by a similar percentage. Some lenders reset on the calendar year, others on your mortgage anniversary, and unused room usually doesn't carry forward.
On the default loan, adding $5,000 at the end of each year (well inside any lender's limit) pays the mortgage off in about 21 years and 3 months and saves around $77,800 in interest. Open the extra payments section and try your own number.
Whether extra money should go on the mortgage or somewhere else depends on your situation. Unused TFSA or RRSP room, an expected return above your mortgage rate after tax, or any consumer debt at credit-card rates can all change the answer. What doesn't change is the fine print. Some of the lowest advertised rates come from "no frills" products that cut prepayment privileges or portability to get there, so read the commitment letter before you celebrate the rate.
Mistakes we see buyers make with payment math
Budgeting at the list price in a multiple-offer market. If a place is likely to go $30,000 over, run the calculator at the price you'd actually be paying. With minimum down that $30,000 comes almost entirely out of the mortgage, and the payment rises with it.
Forgetting the insurance premium. On a $700,000 insured loan the premium adds more than $21,000 to the balance. People who budget on the loan before insurance are surprised when their first statement comes in.
Using a calculator built for the US. Monthly compounding, no CMHC, no Canadian payment frequencies. It's close enough to be convincing and wrong enough to matter.
Choosing semi-monthly and thinking it's accelerated. It isn't. If you want the extra payment each year, the word "accelerated" needs to be in the option you pick.
Stretching both the amortization and the price at the same time. A 30-year amortization is a good safety valve and a bad way to reach a price you can't comfortably carry. Use one lever, not both.
Skipping the strata documents. A special levy is effectively a second mortgage payment with no amortization. The Form B, the minutes from the last two years and the depreciation report will tell you whether one is coming.
Assuming the renewal rate will match today's rate. It might. It might not. Check the renewal scenarios above and make sure the plus-two-points number is one you could live with.
Questions people ask us
Why doesn't my bank's payment match this calculator exactly?
Differences of a few dollars a month usually come from rounding. Lenders round the periodic rate to a set number of decimals, and some calculate from your exact closing date. If the gap is bigger, check the compounding. Canadian fixed-rate mortgages compound semi-annually, while many online calculators compound monthly, which overstates the payment on a $740,000 loan by about $16 a month at 4.34%.
Do I pay the CMHC premium in cash when I close in BC?
No. The premium is added to your mortgage balance and repaid with it. BC doesn't charge provincial sales tax on mortgage insurance premiums, so nothing is owing on the premium at closing. Buyers in Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan do pay provincial tax on the premium up front.
What is the minimum down payment on a $1.2 million home in BC?
$95,000. The rule is 5% of the first $500,000, which is $25,000, plus 10% of the portion between $500,000 and $1.5 million, which is $70,000 on a $1.2 million price. At $1.5 million and above, the minimum is 20%.
How much does a 1% rate change move my payment?
On a $741,392 mortgage over 25 years, going from 4.34% to 5.34% raises the monthly payment from $4,037.72 to $4,456.58, about $419 more. Dropping to 3.34% brings it to $3,639.22. At current rate levels, each percentage point is worth roughly $54 to $57 a month for every $100,000 borrowed.
Can I switch to accelerated bi-weekly payments after I close?
Usually, yes. Most lenders let you change payment frequency during the term, although some limit how often you can do it or need notice before a payment date. At most lenders accelerated payments are simply a frequency option and don't use up your annual prepayment room, but confirm that with yours.
Is a 30-year amortization a bad idea?
Not automatically. It lowers the required payment and costs more interest if you keep it for the full 30 years, about $110,800 more on our default example. If you take 30 years but pay at the 25-year level, the extra cost falls to about $2,350 and you keep the option to drop the payment later. With less than 20% down it's only available to first-time buyers and buyers of new builds.
Does this calculator include property tax and strata fees?
Only if you add them. Open the tax, strata and insurance section under the calculator and the results will show an all-in monthly cost. The listing for any home shows last year's gross property tax and the current strata fee, if there is one.
What happens to my mortgage when the five-year term ends?
You renew at whatever rate is on offer then, on the balance you still owe. On our default example you'd owe about $649,200 after five years. At a 6.34% renewal rate the payment would rise by about $710 a month, and at 3.34% it would fall by about $334. Uninsured borrowers who switch lenders at renewal without adding to the loan no longer have to pass the stress test again.
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