A buyer walks through a dated bungalow in the east end of Hamilton. The kitchen is from 1987. The basement is unfinished. Most people see a project and walk away. A smaller group sees a mortgage program called purchase plus improvements and keeps reading the listing.
This program lets you buy a property that needs work and roll the renovation cost into your mortgage. You are not saving up after closing. You are not opening a line of credit at a higher rate. The reno gets financed at your normal mortgage rate, through your normal lender, before you even move in.
How the money actually moves
The lender does not hand you a lump sum on closing day. Renovation funds sit in a holdback. As work gets done, you submit proof, and the lender releases money in draws. This protects the lender, but it also means you need bridge funding lined up so contractors get paid on schedule instead of waiting for the next draw.
One detail catches people off guard. If your planned improvements come in above roughly 10% of the home's as-improved value, the file shifts from a simple holdback into progress advances, which is a more involved process with more inspections along the way. That is not a reason to avoid the program. It is a reason to plan the scope with someone who has actually run a file through it before.
On amortization, CMHC caps the improvement portion at 25 years. That is public and worth knowing before you fall in love with a number a lender quotes over the phone.
Why these deals usually fall apart
We have watched enough of these purchases to know where they break. It is almost never the mortgage approval. It is the renovation itself.
Contractor pricing drifts. A quote at offer time turns into a change order three months later, and the buyer is suddenly short. Timelines overrun. A six-week reno becomes four months, and the buyer is paying a mortgage on a unit they cannot rent or move into yet.
Both of those problems happen after the buyer has already waived conditions. That is the worst possible time to discover the contractor was optimistic.
Why most agents quote you the same ceiling
Search this program online and you will find the standard renovation limits published by lenders and CMHC. Most agents repeat that number because it is the only one they have ever seen used. It is not wrong, but it is not the full picture either.
We are not going to publish exact figures here, because what a specific lender and construction partner can structure for a specific buyer changes deal by deal. What we can tell you is this: the ceiling most people find on their own is rarely the ceiling available through the right lending and construction relationships. That gap is worth a real conversation before you assume a property is out of reach.
What locking price and timeline actually looks like
Our Ready Home program exists to fix the two things that break these purchases. The renovation price gets set with our construction partner before the buyer removes conditions, not after. The timeline gets locked the same way. Our first Ready Home buyer went firm this way, price and schedule confirmed before conditions came off, and the project starts within weeks of closing.
That sequence matters more than people realize. A buyer who waives conditions on a vague contractor estimate is negotiating with themselves later. A buyer who waives conditions on a fixed number knows exactly what they are getting into on day one.
This approach pairs naturally with the kind of first purchase we outlined in our exact plan for a first-time buyer starting from zero, where buying a property that needs work is step two of a four-part stack. If you are weighing a small multifamily property in the same breath, browsing current Hamilton investment properties will show you what kind of inventory this program actually applies to.
The takeaway: purchase plus improvements lets you buy the property everyone else is skipping, finance the fix at mortgage rates instead of savings, and move in already ahead on equity, as long as the price and timeline are locked before you go firm.
Figures in this post are verified as of August 2026. Program details change, so confirm current eligibility with a mortgage professional before you write an offer.
Let's look at a specific property
Every renovation file is different, and the right structure depends on the property, the scope, and your own numbers. If a fixer-upper in Burlington, Hamilton or Niagara has caught your eye, book a call with our team and we will walk through what purchase plus improvements could actually look like for that specific address.
