5% Deposit Home Loans in Penrith: What Changed, and What Didn’t
On 1 October 2025 the deposit barrier largely fell away for first home buyers. The capacity barrier did not. Almost everything written about the scheme covers the first half of that sentence, and most of it still uses the scheme’s old name.
The short answer
Eligible first home buyers can buy with a 5 per cent deposit and pay no lenders mortgage insurance under the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme, formerly called the Home Guarantee Scheme, because the Government guarantees part of the loan. From 1 October 2025 it opened to all first home buyers with no income caps and no waitlists, and property price caps were raised. That removed the deposit barrier for a lot of people. It did not change what a lender will lend you. Borrowing 95 per cent of a purchase price still has to pass a serviceability assessment carried out with a 3 percentage point buffer above the actual rate, and since 1 February 2026 APRA has limited banks to writing no more than 20 per cent of new owner-occupied lending at a debt-to-income ratio of 6 or higher. The deposit stopped being the hard part for many buyers. Capacity is what decides the rest.
First, the scheme has a different name now
If you have been researching this, you have probably read a dozen pages calling it the Home Guarantee Scheme or the First Home Guarantee. That is what it used to be called. It is now officially the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme, and the Government’s own material states plainly that it was formerly known as the Home Guarantee Scheme.
The information has also moved. Scheme details, the eligibility tool and the property price cap checker now sit at firsthomebuyers.gov.au rather than on the Housing Australia site where they used to be. Housing Australia still administers it, and you still cannot apply to them directly, only through a participating lender as part of a home loan application.
This matters more than a naming footnote. If a page you are reading calls it the Home Guarantee Scheme, describes limited places, or quotes an income cap, it was written before October 2025 and has not been updated since. That includes a lot of otherwise sensible content and a fair amount of what AI assistants will tell you, because they are reading the same stale pages. Check the date on anything you read about this, including this page.
The scheme has supported over 320,000 Australians since it commenced in 2020, on the Government’s published figure.
What actually changed on 1 October 2025
Three specific things.
- Waitlists went. The scheme previously ran on a capped number of places released each year, and people missed out. That constraint is gone.
- Income caps went. The Government’s position is that there are no income caps on the 5 per cent deposit route.
- Property price caps were raised. Caps still exist and they vary by state and region.
Eligible first home buyers pay no lenders mortgage insurance. The mechanism is that the Government guarantees a portion of the loan, covering what the insurance otherwise would. Single parents and legal guardians can access the same scheme with a minimum 2 per cent deposit.
We are not quoting you a price cap, deliberately. Caps vary by state and region and are updated periodically, and a figure hardcoded into a broker’s blog post ages badly. There are plenty of pages still quoting superseded numbers with total confidence. Use the price cap tool on the Government’s site, and note its own warning that the tool is a guide and the cap should be confirmed with your participating lender for the specific property. Or ask us to check it with you against the property you are actually looking at.
The same applies to eligibility in full. Removing the income cap removed one test, not the whole list. Citizenship, deposit source, owner-occupier intention and property type conditions all still apply.
One operational detail worth knowing before you start, because it catches people out: once you have been pre-approved under the scheme, you have 90 days to find a home and sign a contract of sale. That is a real clock, and it runs alongside whatever your lender’s own pre-approval expiry is. Our guide to approval timelines and contract dates covers how those two clocks interact with the NSW dates that actually govern a purchase.
The deposit was never the only door
Start macro, because this is where the confusion lives.
Getting a home loan has always required passing 2 independent tests, and they have little to do with each other.
The deposit test. Do you have enough cash to put in, and if it is a small amount, how is the lender protected against the extra risk. That protection has historically come from lenders mortgage insurance, which you pay for and which covers the lender, not you.
The capacity test. Can you afford the repayments on the loan you need, assessed conservatively, alongside your existing commitments and living expenses.
A smaller deposit does not reduce what you need to borrow. It increases it. Those are the same transaction viewed from opposite ends.
The October 2025 change addressed the first test comprehensively and left the second completely untouched. Which is not a criticism of the policy. The second test exists to stop people borrowing more than they can repay, and that is a reasonable thing for it to do.
So the reframe most buyers need is this. If a 5 per cent deposit is now achievable for you, the question is no longer whether you can get through the door. It is whether the loan required to walk through it is one a lender will write and one you can carry.
Two prudential settings govern that second test. The serviceability buffer means lenders do not assess you at the rate you would actually pay, but at that rate plus a margin, to test whether you could cope if rates rose. APRA confirmed in November 2025 that the buffer remains at 3 percentage points. The effect is that your assessed repayment is meaningfully higher than your real one, and the larger the loan, the larger that gap is in dollars.
The second setting is newer, and it needs handling carefully.
What the DTI limit does, and what it does not
From 1 February 2026, APRA limits authorised deposit-taking institutions to originating no more than 20 per cent of new owner-occupied lending, and separately no more than 20 per cent of new investor lending, at a debt-to-income ratio of 6 or higher. It was announced on 27 November 2025 under APS 220, and it exempts bridging finance and loans for the construction or purchase of new dwellings.
The mechanical connection to a small deposit is straightforward. Debt-to-income is your total debt divided by your gross income. Buy at a given price with a 20 per cent deposit and you borrow 80 per cent of it. Buy the same property with 5 per cent down and you borrow 95 per cent. Same property, same income, materially higher DTI.
Now the part that most commentary on this gets wrong, ours included until we went back to the source. APRA does not expect this limit to bind on first home buyers in the near term, and says so directly. Its information paper states that a 20 per cent limit is unlikely to restrict lending to owner-occupiers or first home buyers in the near term, because those borrowers typically have lower DTIs, and that the limit is not expected to have a near-term impact on borrowers’ access to credit. The pick-up in high DTI lending APRA was responding to was driven by investors, not first home buyers.
So the honest version is narrower than the headline. The limit is a guardrail installed before it became binding, not a door closing on low-deposit buyers. What it does change is at the margin, and in 2 specific ways worth knowing.
- It makes lender choice matter more than it used to. Larger banks measure their DTI position quarterly. Smaller banks, which APRA classes as non-significant financial institutions, measure on a 4-quarter rolling basis and can be given a longer implementation period. So 2 lenders can be at very different points against the same limit at the same moment, for reasons that have nothing to do with your file.
- The exemptions have a local shape. Construction lending and newly erected dwellings sit outside the limits entirely, which is a genuine structural difference in a region where a large share of first home purchases are house and land.
What we are not going to tell you is that low-deposit approvals have become harder in some measured way. We have not seen data supporting that, APRA’s own expectation is the opposite, and we are not going to imply it because it would make a more dramatic page.
Want to know what you could actually borrow?
Book a free 15 minute call. We will check the current price cap for the area you are looking in, work through your capacity assessed at a buffer rather than at an advertised rate, and tell you plainly if the honest answer is to wait. No documents needed to start, and no obligation.
Four routes to a small deposit, not three
The 5% Deposit Scheme is the most discussed route. It is not the only one, and it is not available to everyone.
| Route | How it works | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| 5% Deposit Scheme | The Government guarantees part of the loan in place of mortgage insurance. No LMI for eligible first home buyers, no income caps, no waitlists since 1 October 2025. | A property price cap for your area still applies, along with the rest of the eligibility criteria. It does not approve your loan, and a participating lender still assesses you under its own policy. |
| Help to Buy | Shared equity. Minimum 2 per cent deposit, and the Government contributes up to 30 per cent toward an existing home or up to 40 per cent toward a new one, which cuts the loan you need rather than just the deposit. | Income caps apply, 10,000 places a year, and the Government shares proportionally in any gain or loss. Housing Australia takes a second mortgage. You cannot combine it with the 5% Deposit Scheme. |
| Pay lenders mortgage insurance | Available where the schemes are not, including to buyers who are not first home buyers. The premium is usually capitalised into the loan rather than paid in cash. | It protects the lender, not you. Capitalising it means you borrow more and pay interest on it, and it is generally not transferable if you later move lenders. |
| Family guarantee | A family member offers equity in their own property as additional security, which can remove the need for mortgage insurance. | The guarantor’s property is genuinely at risk if things go wrong. Both sides should get independent legal advice, and it is a family relationship decision as much as a finance one. |
Which of these is available to you, and which is appropriate, depends on your circumstances and is not something a webpage can determine. Our first home buyer loans page covers the residential side, and the guarantor home loan page sets out how the fourth route is structured.
The scheme aimed at capacity instead of deposit
Help to Buy deserves its own section here, because if the argument on this page is right, it is the scheme that addresses the actual problem.
Every other route on that table attacks the deposit test. You put in less cash, and something covers the lender for the risk that creates. None of them reduces the loan. Help to Buy is the only one that does, because the Government takes an equity share rather than guaranteeing a debt.
Housing Australia’s published worked example makes the difference concrete. A buyer purchases an $800,000 home with a $16,000 deposit, a $544,000 loan from a participating lender, and a $240,000 Government contribution for a 30 per cent equity share. The loan-to-value ratio on the borrowing is 68 per cent.
Run the same $800,000 property through the 5% Deposit Scheme and the arithmetic is a $40,000 deposit against a $760,000 loan, at 95 per cent. Same house, same buyer, and a difference of $216,000 in the amount being serviced. That is not a marketing comparison, it is subtraction, and it is the whole reason the 2 schemes suit different people.
The costs are real and they are not hidden. Income caps apply, currently set at a taxable income at or below $103,000 for individual applicants and $165,000 for joint applicants and single parents, assessed on the previous financial year’s ATO notice of assessment and indexed annually. There are 10,000 places a year. You must live in the property, you cannot rent it out, and you cannot own other property here or overseas. Housing Australia takes a second mortgage, and you participate in periodic reviews providing updated income and insurance details. Most significantly, the Government shares proportionally in any gain when you sell or buy out its share, and the amount repayable is based on the property’s value at that time rather than at purchase.
So it is a genuine trade: less debt and less risk now, in exchange for a share of the upside later. Whether that trade is right for you depends on your income, your time horizon and how you feel about the equity share, and it is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by default. What is not sensible is not knowing it exists, which is where most buyers currently are, and where the previous version of this page left them.
One practical note: you cannot use Help to Buy alongside the 5% Deposit Scheme or a state shared equity arrangement. You can still access stamp duty concessions, grants and exemptions.
What “no LMI” saves you, and what it does not
Waived mortgage insurance is a real benefit and worth having. It is also the most oversold feature in first home buyer marketing, so here is the whole picture.
What it saves is a specific upfront cost. Lenders mortgage insurance on a high loan-to-value ratio loan is a substantial sum, normally capitalised into the loan, which means you would otherwise be borrowing it and paying interest on it for years. Avoiding that is genuinely valuable.
What it does not do is make the purchase cheap. You are still borrowing 95 per cent of the price rather than 80 per cent. The extra 15 per cent of the purchase price is real debt, it accrues interest for as long as you hold the loan, and no guarantee changes that arithmetic. Removing an entry fee is not the same as reducing the price.
And it is conditional, which almost nobody mentions. The guarantee comes with ongoing obligations, the central one being that you live in the property as an owner-occupier. The Government’s own material is explicit that if those obligations are not met the guarantee may no longer apply, and your lender may then require you to pay lenders mortgage insurance or other additional costs. So “no LMI” is not a permanent property of the loan. It is a condition of continuing to use the home the way you said you would, which is worth understanding before circumstances change and you find yourself weighing up moving out and renting it.
We are not going to put a dollar figure on the saving, because premiums vary by lender and insurer and the interest cost depends on your rate, term and repayment behaviour. Any page quoting a precise saving is making assumptions it has not shown you. Both numbers are worth working out for your situation, and the second is usually larger than people expect.
The thin equity problem nobody markets
A 5 per cent deposit means you begin ownership with a 5 per cent stake and a 95 per cent loan. That has consequences beyond the repayment.
You have almost no buffer against price movement. Property values move in both directions. We do not forecast them and nobody reliably can. What can be said as arithmetic is that a small decline in value can put a highly geared borrower into negative equity, where the loan exceeds the property’s value. That forces nothing to happen if you keep making repayments, but it makes selling or refinancing difficult until the position recovers.
Your refinancing options are limited early on. Moving lenders generally requires the new lender to be comfortable with the loan-to-value ratio, and above certain thresholds mortgage insurance can be triggered again with the new lender. So a borrower starting at 95 per cent may find the usual advice about reviewing your loan every couple of years does not fully apply for a while. That is a real constraint on your options, of the kind covered in our guide to what happens when a loan is structured wrong.
Costs beyond the deposit still exist. A 5 per cent deposit is not the total cash requirement. Transfer duty where it applies, legal and conveyancing fees, building and pest inspections, lender fees and moving costs are separate. First home buyers in New South Wales may receive a full duty exemption or a concession depending on the property value under the thresholds published by Revenue NSW, and eligibility conditions apply.
None of this is an argument against buying with a small deposit. It is the set of things you should be able to state back to someone before you do.
Penrith and the Western Sydney growth corridor
Two local points, and they cut in opposite directions.
The first is favourable. Property price caps are the constraint that decides whether the scheme is usable at all in a given market, and they bite hardest in the most expensive parts of Sydney. Penrith and the broader western and south western corridor sit at a very different price point to the inner and eastern suburbs, which is precisely why the scheme is more practically usable here than in much of the rest of the city. That is a genuine local advantage rather than a marketing line.
The second is a caution. A large share of first home purchasing across the Penrith corridor and the north west and south west growth areas is house and land, knockdown rebuild, or off the plan. Those are structurally different transactions. Construction lending draws down progressively, involves builder contract review, and is valued on completion. Off the plan adds a long gap between exchange and completion during which your circumstances, lender policy and the completion valuation can all change.
Construction and newly erected dwellings are exempt from the DTI limits, which helps. But a low deposit plus a construction timeline plus a completion valuation is a stack of variables, and the sequencing conversation belongs before you sign anything. Our construction loan page covers the structure, and the drawdown mechanics are in our guide to how progress payments actually flow.
Who this genuinely suits, and who should wait
A page written by a broker has an obvious commercial interest in telling you to proceed. So here is the split as honestly as we can put it.
| A small deposit tends to suit | Waiting tends to be the better call when |
|---|---|
| Stable, documented income where the assessed repayment is comfortably affordable rather than marginally so | The repayment works at the actual rate but not at an assessment rate well above it |
| Buyers whose savings rate is being outpaced by the market they are trying to enter | There is no emergency buffer left after settlement, so any interruption becomes a crisis |
| People intending to hold the property a long time, where a thin early equity position has time to build | You expect to move or sell within a couple of years, while the equity buffer is still thin |
| Buyers in markets where the price cap makes the scheme genuinely usable, which includes much of Western Sydney | Income is about to change materially in either direction, so the assessment would look different in 6 months |
| Households where borrowing capacity, not deposit, was never the limiting factor | The only way the numbers work is by assuming a rate move, a pay rise or a price movement that has not happened |
The pattern in the right-hand column is worth naming: every one of them is a case where the purchase depends on something that has not happened yet. Buying is a reasonable decision made on the numbers as they are. It is a poor one made on the numbers as you hope they will be.
The test we would apply. Work out the repayment on the loan you would need, at an interest rate 3 percentage points above the one you would actually pay, since that is roughly how the lender is assessing you anyway. If that number is manageable, the deposit conversation is worth having. If it is not, no scheme fixes it, and finding that out now costs you nothing. If the gap is capacity rather than deposit, that is the point at which Help to Buy is worth looking at properly rather than as an afterthought.
Read Intellect Finance’s Google reviews
First home buyers are the group most exposed to overconfident advice, because they have the least basis for comparison. Rather than telling you how we handle that, here are the reviews, live and unedited from our Google Business Profile.
These reviews reflect other clients’ experiences. They are not a promise of any particular outcome for your loan, which will always depend on your circumstances, scheme eligibility and the lender’s assessment.
Frequently Asked
5% Deposit Questions, Answered Plainly
What first home buyers ask once the headline stops being the whole story.
Can I really buy a home with a 5% deposit in 2026?
For eligible first home buyers, yes. From 1 October 2025 the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme opened to all first home buyers with no income caps and no waitlists, and eligible buyers pay no lenders mortgage insurance. What it does not change is what you can borrow. You still have to satisfy a lender that you can service a loan of 95 per cent of the purchase price, assessed with a serviceability buffer on top of the actual rate, and that is the harder of the 2 tests for most people.
Is it still called the Home Guarantee Scheme?
No. It is now the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme, and the Government states it was formerly known as the Home Guarantee Scheme. Scheme information, the eligibility check and the price cap tool have also moved to firsthomebuyers.gov.au. Housing Australia still administers it. If a page you are reading uses the old name and describes limited places or income caps, it predates October 2025.
If there are no income limits, does everyone qualify?
No. Removing the income cap removed one test, not the list. Property price caps still apply and vary by state and region, along with conditions covering citizenship, deposit, property type and living in the home as an owner-occupier. Separately, the scheme does not approve your loan. A participating lender still assesses you under its own credit policy, and that assessment is where most applications are actually decided.
Why is borrowing capacity the bigger barrier now?
Because the deposit test was addressed and the capacity test was not. Lenders assess your repayment at 3 percentage points above the rate you would actually pay, and a 95 per cent loan is a larger loan than an 80 per cent one on the same property, so the assessed repayment is higher in dollars. Nothing about the guarantee changes that calculation. For many buyers the deposit has stopped being the constraint and the loan size has become it.
Do APRA’s debt-to-income limits stop first home buyers?
APRA says not in the near term. From 1 February 2026 banks can write no more than 20 per cent of new owner-occupied lending at a debt-to-income ratio of 6 or higher, but APRA’s own information paper says the limit is unlikely to restrict lending to owner-occupiers or first home buyers in the near term, because those borrowers typically have lower DTIs, and that it is not expected to affect access to credit in the near term. It was aimed at a pick-up in high DTI investor lending. What it does affect is which lender suits you at which moment, since larger banks measure quarterly and smaller ones on a 4-quarter rolling basis.
What is Help to Buy and how is it different?
It is a shared equity scheme, and it is the only route that reduces the loan rather than just the deposit. You contribute a minimum 2 per cent deposit and the Government contributes up to 30 per cent toward an existing home or 40 per cent toward a new one, taking an equity share instead of guaranteeing a debt. Income caps apply, there are 10,000 places a year, Housing Australia takes a second mortgage, and the Government shares proportionally in any gain or loss based on the property’s value when you exit. You cannot use it together with the 5% Deposit Scheme.
Does avoiding lenders mortgage insurance mean buying is cheaper?
It means one upfront cost is avoided, which is real and worth having. It does not reduce the price of the property or the size of the loan. You are borrowing 95 per cent rather than 80 per cent, and the additional borrowing accrues interest for as long as you hold the loan. Removing an entry fee is not the same as reducing a price, and the interest cost on the extra borrowing is usually the larger of the 2 numbers.
Can the no-LMI benefit be taken away later?
The guarantee carries ongoing obligations, the main one being that you continue living in the property as an owner-occupier. The Government’s material states that if those obligations are not met the guarantee may no longer apply, and the lender may then require you to pay lenders mortgage insurance or other additional costs. So it is worth raising with your lender before any change in how you use the property, rather than after.
How long do I have to find a property once approved?
Under the 5% Deposit Scheme, once pre-approved you have 90 days to find a home and sign a contract of sale. That clock runs alongside your lender’s own pre-approval expiry, which may be a different length. Under Help to Buy the reserved place also runs 90 days from the conditional approval letter, with the possibility of an extension of up to another 90 days if Housing Australia approves it.
What is the risk of buying with only 5% equity?
Mainly a lack of buffer. A modest decline in value can put a highly geared borrower into negative equity, where the loan exceeds the property’s value. That forces nothing while you keep repaying, but it makes selling or refinancing difficult until the position recovers, and it limits your ability to move lenders in the early years because a new lender may trigger mortgage insurance at that loan-to-value ratio. It is a reason to plan on holding, and to keep a cash buffer after settlement.
Should I use a 5% deposit or wait and save more?
The test worth applying is whether the repayment on the loan you would need is manageable at roughly 3 percentage points above the rate you would actually pay, since that is close to how the lender assesses it. If yes, and you plan to hold the property for a long period, a small deposit is a reasonable decision. If the numbers only work by assuming a rate cut, a pay rise or a price movement that has not happened, waiting is usually the better call, and no scheme changes that.
The honest bottom line
The October 2025 change was significant and worth understanding properly. No waitlists, no income caps, higher price caps and no mortgage insurance for eligible first home buyers is a real removal of a real barrier, and if you have been saving toward a 20 per cent deposit you may not need to any more.
What it did not do is make housing cheaper or lending looser. It moved the question from the deposit to your borrowing capacity, and capacity is assessed with a 3 percentage point buffer that has not moved. The new DTI limit sits alongside that, but on APRA’s own account it is a guardrail rather than a barrier for first home buyers, and we would rather say that than imply a squeeze the regulator does not expect.
So the question worth asking is not whether you can buy with 5 per cent. For many first home buyers in Western Sydney, you now can. It is whether the loan that requires is one you can carry at an assessment rate, with a thin equity buffer, for the years it takes that buffer to build. If the answer is yes, this is a genuinely better environment than the one before it. If the answer is no because of capacity rather than deposit, that is the specific situation Help to Buy was designed for, and it is worth a proper look before you conclude the door is shut.
Joseph Sukkar
Joseph has worked in Australian finance for more than 25 years and has run Intellect Finance from central Penrith since 2005, through several iterations of first home buyer support schemes and the recurring gap between what each one is announced to do and what it changes in practice. Intellect Finance charges clients no fee on any loan type. More about the team.
Sources
Australian Government, First Home Buyers, Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme, for the scheme’s current name and its former name, the 1 October 2025 removal of income caps and waitlists, the absence of lenders mortgage insurance for eligible buyers, the 5 per cent and 2 per cent minimum deposits, the figure of over 320,000 Australians supported since 2020, the 90 day period to find a home after pre-approval, the requirement to apply through a participating lender, and the ongoing owner-occupier obligations attaching to the guarantee. firsthomebuyers.gov.au
Australian Government, First Home Buyers, Australian Government Help to Buy Scheme, for the minimum 2 per cent deposit, the Government contribution of up to 30 per cent for existing homes and 40 per cent for new homes, the 10,000 places a year, the published worked example, the income thresholds and their annual indexation, the second mortgage taken by Housing Australia, the proportional sharing of gains and losses, the ongoing obligations and exit routes, and the exclusion of other Commonwealth and state shared equity support. firsthomebuyers.gov.au
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Activating debt-to-income limits as a macroprudential policy tool, information paper, 27 November 2025, for the 20 per cent limit at a debt-to-income ratio of 6 or higher applying separately to owner-occupied and investor lending from February 2026, the exemptions for bridging finance and for construction and newly erected dwellings, the quarterly measurement for significant financial institutions and 4 quarter rolling measurement for others, the confirmation that the serviceability buffer remains at 3 percentage points, and APRA’s statement that the limit is unlikely to restrict lending to owner-occupiers or first home buyers in the near term. apra.gov.au
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Activation of debt-to-income limits as a macroprudential policy tool, letter to all authorised deposit-taking institutions, 27 November 2025, for the implementation details in Annex A including the application under APS 220 Attachment C and the definition of the exempt categories. apra.gov.au
Revenue NSW, First Home Buyer Assistance Scheme, for New South Wales transfer duty exemptions and concessions available to eligible first home buyers and the thresholds that apply. revenue.nsw.gov.au
Important disclosures, general advice warning and licensing
General information only. This article is general information only and does not constitute financial, credit, legal or tax advice. It does not take your personal or financial circumstances into account. Before acting on any information here, consider whether it is appropriate to your objectives, financial situation and needs.
About the scheme details. The Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme was formerly known as the Home Guarantee Scheme. The changes described, being no waitlists, removal of income caps, higher property price caps and no lenders mortgage insurance for eligible first home buyers from 1 October 2025, are as published by the Australian Government. This page deliberately does not state a property price cap figure, because caps vary by state and region, are updated periodically, and a figure published here would date. Full eligibility criteria, current caps and the list of participating lenders are published by the Government and should be checked directly. Intellect Finance does not determine scheme eligibility, which is a matter for Housing Australia and the participating lender.
About Help to Buy. Help to Buy is a shared equity arrangement in which the Australian Government takes an equity share in your property and shares proportionally in any gain or loss, with the amount repayable determined by the property’s value at the time of repayment rather than at purchase. Income thresholds, place numbers, eligibility criteria and property price caps apply and are indexed or updated periodically. The worked example described is the Government’s own published illustration and the comparison drawn from it is arithmetic on those published figures, not a projection, a quote or a recommendation. Shared equity is a significant long-term financial decision and independent legal and financial advice is strongly recommended before entering into one.
About the regulatory figures. The debt-to-income limits described were announced by APRA on 27 November 2025 and took effect from 1 February 2026, limiting authorised deposit-taking institutions to 20 per cent of new owner-occupied lending and 20 per cent of new investor lending at a debt-to-income ratio of 6 or higher, with exemptions for bridging finance and for the construction or purchase of new dwellings. APRA confirmed in the same information paper that the mortgage serviceability buffer remains at 3 percentage points. APRA’s stated expectation is that the limit is unlikely to restrict lending to owner-occupiers or first home buyers in the near term. Regulatory settings are stated as at 10 September 2026 and are subject to change. The serviceability buffer is a prudential expectation placed on lenders and creates no entitlement for any borrower.
No forecasts, and no savings claims. Nothing on this page forecasts interest rates or property values, and no statement here should be read as a prediction of either. This page deliberately does not quote a dollar figure for lenders mortgage insurance premiums or for interest costs, because both depend on the lender, the insurer, the loan amount, the rate and the term. Any figures relevant to you should be calculated on your actual circumstances.
Lender policies vary and change. Borrowing capacity, maximum loan-to-value ratios, acceptable deposit sources, genuine savings requirements, mortgage insurance criteria, guarantor policies and participation in the government schemes differ between lenders and can change without notice. This page names no lenders and publishes no interest rates. No broker can guarantee loan approval, scheme eligibility, a particular interest rate, a valuation outcome or a timeframe.
Guarantor arrangements. A family guarantee places the guarantor’s property at risk. Both the borrower and the guarantor should obtain independent legal advice before entering into any guarantee, and in many cases the lender will require it.
Other professionals. Contracts, cooling off rights, finance clauses, guarantees and conveyancing go to your solicitor or conveyancer. Tax, ownership structure and duty questions go to your accountant, a registered tax agent, or Revenue NSW as applicable. New South Wales transfer duty thresholds for first home buyers are published by Revenue NSW and eligibility conditions apply. If you are having difficulty meeting repayments, contact your lender’s hardship team, and free independent help is available from the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007.
Best Interests Duty. A home loan for a property you will live in is regulated consumer credit under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, and Best Interests Duty applies.
What we charge you. Nothing, on any loan type. No arrangement fee for residential, commercial, corporate, asset, SMSF or personal lending, no fee for complex or specialist lending, and no clawback recovery fee if a loan is discharged early. Lenders pay us a commission on settlement, disclosed to you in writing in our Credit Guide before we provide credit assistance.
About the reviews shown. The reviews displayed on this page are genuine reviews published by clients on Intellect Finance’s Google Business Profile, shown live via a third-party reviews widget. They reflect those individuals’ own experiences and are not a promise of any particular outcome.
Intellect Finance Pty Ltd holds Australian Credit Licence 390611 and is a member of the MFAA and AFCA. Lending criteria, fees and terms apply. Article checked 10 September 2026.
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