You bought on projected income.
You renew on real income.

When you bought as a resident, a physician program let you qualify on a projected income figure instead of the pay stub you actually had. That figure was flat. First and second year residents and fellows were mapped to $185,000. Third year and later were mapped to $225,000. It was a stand in for earnings you had not booked yet.

At renewal that stand in is gone. Once you are more than 36 months into practice, projected income no longer applies. The lender reads actual verified income: your notices of assessment, your practice statements, and, if you incorporated, your corporate financials and how you pay yourself out of the company. The renewal file is a different file than the purchase file.

Three things usually moved in your favour since the first term. Verified income replaced a flat projection. The balance is lower after years of payments. And the structure may now include a corporation the original file did not have. A lender reads all three.

For scale, the Canadian Institute for Health Information reports average gross clinical payments by specialty for 2023-2024. These are gross payments before overhead, and they are head counts, not workload adjusted. They are not take-home pay. But they show how far real earnings can sit above a $225,000 projection once you are billing.

The renewal letter that lands before maturity is an offer. It is one lender's proposed rate and term to keep your business with the least effort. It is not the only option, and signing it by return mail is the default that the letter is built to produce.

You have the right to compare before you sign. A renewal is a natural point to test the market, because moving a mortgage at maturity is cleaner than breaking one mid-term. The question is whether the offered terms fit the file you now have, which is a stronger file than the one you started with.

What to weigh, not just the number

None of this requires accepting the first letter. It requires reading it as a starting point and checking it against a file that reflects real income. See the physician mortgage renewal strategy page for how the pieces fit together.

If income tripled since you bought, the useful question at renewal is not only the rate. It is whether the same monthly payment can shorten the amortization. When the balance is lower and earnings are higher, holding a payment steady instead of letting it drop can push more of each payment against principal.

That is what the Match Payment Review is for. It takes the payment you are used to and models what happens if you keep it against the new balance and term, rather than resetting to the smallest payment the renewal allows. The point is a decision, not a target you have to hit.

This is illustrative, not a recommendation about your taxes or your cash flow. Whether to direct extra income at the mortgage, at a corporation, or elsewhere is your call with your own advisors. The Match Payment Review just shows what the mortgage does under each choice so the trade-off is visible before you sign the renewal.

Start six to four months before maturity. That leaves time to compare the renewal offer, pull income documents, and switch lenders if the numbers favour it, without the pressure of a deadline pushing you to sign the first letter.

What to gather

Jeff Mudrick is licensed in Ontario. Physicians in British Columbia and Alberta work with Taylor Atkinson of Venture Mortgages. Physicians elsewhere in Canada are matched with a vetted referral broker. Bring the file to a physician mortgage specialist and run the renewal offer and the Match Payment Review side by side before the maturity date.

Figures in this guide come from the sources below. Each entry shows the date the source published it, or the date it was accessed when the source does not state one. The page carries a review-by date; after June 2027 treat any number as a starting point and check the source.