If you have ever owned a home or are thinking of buying one you may have heard the term loan to value or "LTV" for short. This is a calculation that reflects the amount of debt you owe against your home as a percentage.For example if you owned a home worth $200,000 and you had a $100,000 mortgage, your mortgage would represent 50% of the value of your home and so the loan to value would be 50%.If you want to purchase a home with a 5% down payment that means you need a mortgage that is 95% loan to value. Mortgages that are over 75% loan to value are considered high ratio mortgages and usually require CMHC high ration mortgage insurance. This insures the lender for monies lost in the event you default on the mortgage. Typically the more equity you have in your home the easier it is to get a mortgage. There are equity lenders that offer equity only mortgages so even if you have bad credit or difficulty proving your income they will help if you have enough equity. Usually these lenders like to do mortgages no greater than 80% loan to value. In the past if you wanted to refinance your home the CMHC used to high ratio insure [http://www.trueassess.com/a-leveragingassets.php] ">mortgage refinances up to 95% loan to value, but recently announced that it was reducing the permitted loan to value to 90%. CMHC also used to insure high ratio lines of credit but also announced that they will no longer be insuring those anymore either. If you want to calculate how much lendable equity you have in your home based on a loan to value all you have to do it take your property value, multiply it by the loan to value (the percentage you want to borrow) and then subtract any mortgages owing against the property as well as property tax or other liens/encumbrances. If the number is positive it represents the amount you could borrow based on the selected loan to value percentage you included in your calculation. If the number is negative that means based on the loan to value percentage used, there is no lendable equity. For more information about how to calculate a loan to value please visit [http://www.trueassess.com].