CMHC MLI Select energy points are the cheapest points on the board for a BC rental development. The program pays out on a 100-point scale, energy efficiency contributes up to 50, and in BC those points map directly to the Energy Step Code level your project declares. Declare Step 3 and you hold the energy maximum. Declare nothing beyond code minimum and you hold 20. Same building, same budget, very different financing. Most developers claim fewer points than their building already earns, and the fix is usually paperwork, not construction.
What the points buy
MLI Select is CMHC mortgage loan insurance for rental buildings with a points system attached. A project needs a minimum of 50 points to qualify. From there the benefits climb in tiers:
- 50 points earns a 10 percent premium discount and a 40-year amortization
- 70 points earns a 20 percent premium discount and a 45-year amortization
- 100 points earns a 30 percent premium discount and a 50-year amortization
Every tier allows up to 95 percent loan-to-cost with limited recourse.
Those discounts land on a real number. The base premium on new construction at 85 percent loan-to-value is 6.00 percent, plus a surcharge of 0.25 percent for every 5 years of amortization beyond 25. The premium is calculated on the whole insured loan, so the discount scales with the size of the project. The amortization extension matters even more. Stretching the same loan over 50 years instead of 40 drops the annual debt payments, and the debt service is what decides how much a lender will advance in the first place.
Mortgage insurance premium tables are not thrilling reading. Nobody has ever read one twice for fun. The discounts buried in them are worth the trip.
How the energy points actually score
Energy efficiency contributes a maximum of 50 points. The official route scores your building against the NECB 2020 reference building, the national energy code CMHC uses as its measuring stick.
| Improvement over NECB 2020 reference | Energy points |
|---|---|
| Level 1, at least 25 percent better | 20 |
| Level 2, at least 50 percent better | 35 |
| Level 3, at least 60 percent better | 50 |
The direct route needs a separate NECB reference model built for CMHC. BC projects get a shortcut. CMHC accepts the BC Energy Step Code in its place:
- Step 2 scores as Level 1, worth 20 points
- Step 3 scores as Level 3, worth 50 points
- Step 4 also scores as Level 3, worth the same 50 points
The document that carries the declaration is the BC Part 3 Energy and Zero Carbon Design Checklist. No separate NECB model required.
Here is the part people get wrong. The provincial code minimum for a new rental building in BC is Step 2 plus Zero Carbon Energy Level 1. Step 3 is only required where a local government has adopted it by bylaw. So a code-minimum building walks in holding 20 energy points, not 50. Declaring Step 3 is a deliberate 30-point jump that has to be designed for, declared on the checklist, and backed by the energy model. On most BC Interior projects it is the single biggest points move available, and it is an envelope decision made months before anyone talks to a lender.
One timing note. CMHC has been tightening its scoring baselines over the past year. The Step Code shortcut is accepted today, but on any file closing late in 2026, get its treatment confirmed in writing before the pro forma relies on it. Optimism is not a financing document.
The declaration gap
MLI Select scores what a building declares, not what it does. Nobody from CMHC shows up later, measures your airtightness, and mails you the points your building earned in the field. Modesty is expensive here.
We see the gap in real buildings. An 84-unit, 4-storey wood-frame rental in the Okanagan Valley that we insulated posted energy numbers of 94 kilowatt hours per square metre per year against a Step 3 target of 119. That beats the target by 21 percent. The blower door came in at 0.20 litres per second per square metre of facade, which is an apartment building hitting the airtightness of a Step 4 house. The performance was never the problem.
The paperwork was. The same project was declared at Step 3 and never enrolled in the FortisBC program that pays on a Step 4 declaration, and $161,650 in rebates stayed with the utility. The full story is in our FortisBC CNC rebate post.
On the points side the same pattern shows up one step down. A building designed and built to Step 3 performance that only declares code minimum walks away with 20 points instead of 50. Nothing about the building changes. The checklist does. The rebate ledger and the points ledger fail the same way. Both pay on the declaration, both get decided at design, and both get missed in meetings about something else.
A building that performs above its declaration is a donation. The utility and the insurer both accept them.
Stacking past 50 points
Energy caps at 50, so the 70 and 100 point tiers need points from the other two categories.
Affordability is the heavyweight. Committing 10, 15, or 25 percent of units at rents set to 30 percent of the median local renter income earns 50, 70, or 100 points, and a 20-year commitment adds a 30-point bonus. Accessibility adds up to 30 points on new construction. 15 percent accessible units earns 20 points, and full universal design or Rick Hansen Gold certification earns 30.
Two caps to know. Energy and accessibility together cap at 80 points. Affordability and accessibility together cap at 100.
A common BC stack looks like this. 50 energy points through a Step 3 declaration, 20 accessibility points, and 50 affordability points. That adds to 120 and the program counts 100. CMHC generosity has a ceiling. But 100 points is the full 30 percent premium discount and the 50-year amortization, which is the whole prize.
Notice what the energy points do in that stack. They are the only 50 points that do not cost rent revenue for decades. Affordability points are real money surrendered every month for 10 or 20 years. Accessibility points cost design and construction changes. Energy points, on a building that was going to have a strong envelope anyway, cost a declaration.
Where the envelope fits, and when to skip this
The points get scored at financing, but they get created at design, in the envelope and mechanical decisions that determine which step your modeller can defend. The cheapest time to buy points is before the drawings lock.
Here is the opinion, with the number behind it. The building industry has been slow to do the math on what an envelope earns. People get stuck on the price per square foot of closed-cell foam and never run it against the financing. The 4-storey rental above beat its energy target by 21 percent with 5-inch closed-cell spray foam in the exterior walls. That is the work covered on our Step Code 4 insulation in Kelowna page, installed by the same crew behind our commercial spray foam insulation in Kelowna projects.
Worth repeating: Step 4 earns no extra MLI Select points over Step 3. Both score 50. The reason to push to Step 4 is the FortisBC CNC capital incentive at $2.50 per square foot, which stacks on top of the financing benefit. The Step Code mechanics behind both programs are in our BC Energy Step Code MURB guide.
And here is when to skip this conversation entirely. If your municipality has already adopted Step 3 by bylaw, your permit drags the 50 energy points along with it, and you do not need an envelope advisor to claim what the building department already required. File the checklist and spend your attention on the affordability stack. Same answer if your pro forma already reaches 100 points on affordability alone. The cap does not care how earnest your envelope is.
Get the points scored before the specs lock
Every point above is decided before above-ground construction. After that the declaration is what it is, and the financing follows it.
So the ask is simple. Book a free building assessment for your next project. For developers this is a pre-construction points and rebates review. We go through the drawings, the energy model path, the step declaration plan, and the rebate stack, and we put in writing which points and rebates the building can earn and what would quietly disqualify them. If the honest answer is that your stack is already optimized, you will hear that too, and it will have cost you an hour.
Book a free building assessment before the envelope specs lock. Your building is probably better than its paperwork. Make them match.
Sources
- CMHC MLI Select product page: cmhc-schl.gc.ca
- CMHC MLI Select product sheet: cmhc-schl.gc.ca (PDF)
- BC Energy Step Code, Part 3 checklist: bcenergystepcode.ca
- Featured image: Photo by Jan van der Wolf on Pexels