A newcomer to Canada with 35% down: walking the file start to finish.

Strong income, a clean employment letter, and healthy savings — the borrower's biggest gap was simply time in Canada: eight months, with no Canadian credit bureau file at all, only a strong credit history from her country of origin.

CMHC's Newcomers mortgage loan insurance program exists precisely for this kind of file — it allows a minimum down payment starting at 5%, accepts international credit reports and financial-institution reference letters in place of Canadian credit history, and requires a minimum credit score of 600 for at least one borrower or guarantor. It looked like the right fit.

In this walkthrough, the specific lender the file was first shopped to required a minimum of twelve months' presence in Canada to extend its newcomer-insured approval — the borrower was at eight. Waiting four months risked losing the specific unit she wanted in a competitive building.

This is a reminder worth stating plainly: minimum time-in-Canada, documentation specifics, and which lenders actively participate in an insured newcomer program all vary. CMHC's program sets the floor an insurer will allow; individual lenders can and do layer their own additional requirements on top of it.

Rather than wait, the broker structured the purchase as a conventional (uninsured) deal with 35% down — a down payment large enough that the lender's own conventional underwriting could carry the file on strength of income and savings alone, without needing to rely on an insured newcomer program's specific documentation path.

• →Reference letters from the borrower's bank in her home country, confirming account history and standing.
• →Six months of Canadian bank statements showing consistent salary deposits and stable spending patterns.
• →An employment letter confirming salary, position, and permanency of the role.
• →Confirmation of the source and seasoning of the down payment funds.

None of this required the file to fit inside a newcomer-insured box — it simply gave a conventional lender enough to underwrite confidently on its own terms.

Before writing any offer, the file was checked against the federal Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Regulations. A work permit holder is exempted from the prohibition where they have at least 183 days of validity remaining on their work permit at the date of purchase, and are not purchasing more than one residential property.

With well over two years remaining on her permit and this being her only planned purchase, the borrower cleared the exemption easily — but this check isn't optional, and it has to happen before an offer is written, not discovered afterward.

A low-down-payment insured path existing for newcomers doesn't mean every newcomer file will fit it on the timeline the client wants. Time-in-Canada thresholds, lender participation, and documentation specifics can all push a file toward a larger, conventional down payment instead — and that's not a downgrade, just a different route to the same closing date.

The federal purchase eligibility check is a separate question entirely from mortgage qualification, and it has to be confirmed independently for every non-Canadian or newly-landed buyer before an offer is written.