Picture the classic main street building: a cafe or barbershop at ground level, two apartments upstairs. Mixed-use properties like these anchor Canada’s best neighbourhoods, and investors love them for the same reason lenders scrutinize them: two kinds of income under one roof.

Here’s the rule buyers tend to learn too late. How the building splits between residential and commercial use largely decides your financing. Tilt residential, and you may access programs with better rates, longer amortizations, and lighter down payments. Tilt commercial, and the building is judged as a business asset whose own income has to carry the loan. Two nearly identical buildings on the same block can walk away with very different terms. Lenders will also read the leases, check the legal status of the units, and ask about the property’s history, since a former dry cleaner in the retail bay can change the conversation.

Outline Financial has direct access to over 30 institutional and private lenders, including the ones actively hunting for mixed-use deals. We’ll size up your building, tell you honestly how lenders will see it, and present it at its best.