Projected income after residency and
when actual income takes over

Projected income applies in your final year of training and for 36 months after your completion date. Past that point, projected income no longer applies and the lender uses your actual verified income.

Inside the window the projected figure is a floor, not a bonus. The lender compares your actual verified income to the projected figure and uses the projected one only when actual is lower. So a slow first practice year, ramping billings, a locum stretch, none of that pulls your qualifying income below the chart. Your actual income still has to come from the medical field, and a file with zero income is not permitted.

In the window, most listed specialties project at $300,000. Family Medicine and any unlisted specialty default to $225,000, and a short list sits higher: Ophthalmology at $379,000, Cardiology at $359,000, Gastroenterology at $309,000. Those chart numbers are deliberately conservative next to what established practices actually bill.

Look at CIHI's 2023-2024 average gross clinical payments. These are gross payments before overhead, and they are head count numbers, not workload adjusted, so they are not take-home. But they show the gap between the qualifying floor and mature billing.

The point is not that you personally will bill the CIHI average in year one. You will not. Overhead, ramp time and part-time starts all pull actual figures down early. The point is that the projected figure gives you a stable qualifying income while your real billings catch up, and it does not overstate what the specialty earns at maturity.

Incorporating changes what a lender reads, but projected income does not care about your structure inside the window. Whether you bill personally or through a corporation, the chart figure is what carries the file for your final year and the 36 months after completion.

This is not tax advice. It is how the file gets read. When a lender moves from projected to actual income, a corporation splits your earnings into what the company receives and what you draw out as salary or dividends. A lender then has to reconstruct your income from corporate financials and personal returns, which takes more documents and more history. Inside the window that reconstruction is not the driver, because the projected figure is the floor.

• In the window: the chart figure qualifies you regardless of whether you have incorporated.
• Out of the window: the lender reads actual income, and a corporation means financials plus personal returns.
• A newly incorporated physician often has thin corporate history, which is exactly why the window matters for timing a purchase.

If you plan to incorporate this year, the sequencing question is simple: a purchase made inside the window leans on the projected figure, so a fresh corporation with little history does not hold you back. See the Mortgages for incorporated physicians page for how the documents differ once actual income takes over.

Use the window while it is open. The projected figure gives you a clean, stable qualifying income for your final year and 36 months after completion. If a purchase is on the horizon, running it inside that window is usually the cleaner path than waiting until actual income and corporate history have to carry the file.

1. Confirm your completion date and count 36 months forward. That is your projected-income deadline.
2. Get the documents ready: completion confirmation with the date and provincial college registration, CPSO in Ontario.
3. Sort the debt picture. Student loans and the professional line of credit count in your ratios even when not in repayment, calculated at the minimum qualifying rate over a 15-year amortization. Other student revolving credit counts at 1.5% of the balance per month.
4. Choose insured or uninsured. Insured allows 10% down with at least 5% from your own resources and up to 25 years. Uninsured needs 20% down with at least 10% from your own resources and up to 30 years.
5. Buy the principal residence, one or two units. Rentals, second homes and business-for-self-plus files are excluded from the program.

A worked qualifier at the chart figure

Here is one final-year example at the $300,000 chart figure, no student debt, 20% down, uninsured, tested at a 6.49% qualifying rate.

Add debt and the number moves. At the same $300,000 with $150,000 of student debt on an insured file at 10% down, the debt line counts at $1,201 a month, the payment sits at $7,250, and the price supported is $1,399,447. That is the mechanism: the debt payment scales with the balance, and it comes straight off what the income can carry. See How much can a physician qualify for to run your own specialty and debt figures.

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 March 2027 treat any number as a starting point and check the source.