The Situation
The clients, a married couple with doctorates, had moved to Canada from the United States a few months earlier. One had been licensed to practise medicine in BC the previous fall and was starting work; the other had spent twelve years as a research professor at a U.S. university, earning about US$140,000, and would keep that role remotely as a Canadian permanent resident. They found a brand-new detached home in Metro Vancouver, about $2.6 million including GST, with a suite that could rent for roughly $2,500 a month.
The Challenge
Neither client had a Canadian credit score; the bureaus showed nothing. Their U.S. credit was clean, mature and thick, with scores in the mid-700s, but a Canadian lender's system does not read it. The physician had months of Canadian income, not the two years a bank normally wants, and the spouse's salary was paid in U.S. dollars by a foreign employer. The down payment, about $528,000, was equity in a U.S. home that still had to sell. On paper: no income history, no credit history and a down payment abroad, for a mortgage of about $2.1 million.
The Solution
We built the file around what it actually had. The physician had started on contract at a BC clinic in late December, keeping half of everything billed with the clinic covering the expenses: about $13,700 net in each of the first two full months, with more offers on the table for the remaining days of the week. A bank wants two years of that; an alternative lender will read it as it stands. We placed the residential mortgage with an alternative lender under a conventional program at 80% loan-to-value. The two months of clinic income and the spouse's U.S. salary, converted at the Bank of Canada rate on a twelve-year tenure, qualified the file; U.S. credit reports stood in for the missing Canadian ones; the suite's market rent was confirmed by appraisal; and the sale of the U.S. home was documented as the down payment. The lender approved roughly $2.1 million on a one-year term.
The Outcome
The purchase completed on schedule with 20% down. Two professionals who had been in the country for five months, with no Canadian credit score between them, own a home in Metro Vancouver, with the suite's rent helping to carry it. The one-year term is deliberate: by renewal there is a year of Canadian income and credit history, which is what moves a file like this from an alternative lender to a bank.