Canadian Mortgage Calculator

Semi-annual compounding, as Canadian lenders quote it.

Foreign lenders quote a rate alongside their own fee structure and deposit rules. Canada permits high-ratio mortgages with default insurance attached, while UK lenders typically advance four to four and a half times household income and charge an arrangement fee on top of the interest.

Not every mortgage follows the American 30-year fixed. Canadian lenders must compound semi-annually by law and quote a nominal rate that has to be converted before it matches a monthly figure, while UK borrowing is usually a fixed deal of two to five years that rolls onto a variable rate afterwards.

Amounts and rates here follow that market's own conventions, so they will not line up with a US quote for the same loan.

Deposit rules shape the arithmetic as much as the rate does. Canada insures high-ratio loans through a crown corporation and adds that premium to the balance, while UK lenders test affordability against a higher rate than the one actually charged, which caps the loan before the payment does.

Canadian Mortgage Calculator sits with the rest of the library's finance work, and it rests on the same cross-border borrowing arithmetic the way a lender's disclosure or a bank statement does. Its answer is only as good as the assumptions standing behind it.

The quantities it works from — mortgage amount, stated annual rate, amortisation and term — are the ones a real cross-border borrowing question actually turns on, and each carries a convention of its own, set out below.

Money questions in America turn on the same few trade-offs: how long a balance is carried, what rate applies to it, and whether the money is being paid down or built up. Inflation sits behind all of them, since a figure that looks generous at today's prices buys less at tomorrow's, and comparisons across decades are made in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

American products also disclose their costs in prescribed ways, from the APR on a consumer loan to the annual percentage yield on a deposit account.