Accountant home loans

Accountants wanting to take out a home loan will need to apply in the same way as any other borrower, following the same general home loan application process and completing all the same steps – including pre-approval and final approval.

While the steps will be the same, accountants may be eligible for a handful of home loan deals which could include LMI waivers and lower interest rates. If you’re interested in exploring your eligibility for these offers, give us a call! One of our expert mortgage brokers will be happy to walk you through your home loan options.

Australian accountants have access to all the same types of home loans as other home loan applicants, which includes:

• Fixed rate loans
• Variable rate loans
• Split rate loans
• Investment loans.

Final loan approval, however, will largely be determined based on your financial situation, including:

• Your income and borrowing power
• Your desired loan amount and loan term
• Your credit score and employment history
• Your ability to show a history of genuine savings.

As an accountant in Australia, you may be eligible for special treatment from lenders, including more competitive rates on your home loan and LMI waivers. This is because financial professionals like accountants are considered ‘low-risk borrowers’ by some lenders due to their high income.

The flipside of this is that these lenders may stipulate minimum income requirements as part of the eligibility criteria for these offers.

In order to access the home loan deals on offer to accountants in Australia, you may need to first prove that you’re a qualified and practising accountant. You could do this in a number of ways, including:

• Showing evidence of employment at an accounting firm or evidence that you’re self-employed as an accountant.
• Showing evidence of membership in a relevant professional body such as CPA Australia or CAANZ.
• Showing proof of income as an accountant (i.e. payslips).

Accountants applying for a new home loan may not have to pay LMI like other home loan applicants, even if their saved deposit is less than 20% of the home loan amount. This is because, depending on their financial circumstances, accountants may be eligible for LMI waivers from certain lenders.

Accountants could even avoid paying LMI with a saved home loan deposit as small as 5% of the loan amount, giving them a loan-to-value ratio (LVR) of 95% – an LVR which would typically necessitate the paying of LMI by the applicant.

However, it’s worth noting that, all other things being equal, the larger your home loan deposit, the less you’ll have to borrow from the lender, and the smaller your home loan repayments will be.

That being said, homeownership may be enough of a priority for you that you’re comfortable taking on more debt in order to buy a property sooner.

As an accountant, you may be able to avoid paying LMI on your new home loan depending on the lender you’re applying with, the value of the property you’re buying, and the size of your saved deposit.

Lenders that offer waived LMI to professionals they consider as ‘low-risk’ borrowers such as accountants will typically require a saved deposit of at least 5% of the purchase price, much less than the traditional 20% required to avoid paying LMI.

Paying no LMI on your new home loan could save you a significant amount of money, whether you would’ve paid your LMI upfront or capitalised it into your home loan balance and paid it off via your regular home loan repayments.

Below shows some example amounts of LMI an accountant, or any borrower for that matter, could potentially pay as a first home buyer. These calculations have been based on a range of different property value/deposit amount combinations: