Home loans for nurses

Australian nurses will go through the same home loan application process and follow all the same steps as anyone else applying for a home loan, including pre-approval, final approval and settlement.

That being said, nurses may be eligible for certain home loan perks and incentives, including LMI waivers and more competitive interest rates. One of our expert mortgage brokers can walk you through your options, and help you find a lender best-positioned to help you with your home loan application as a nurse.

Nurses in Australia can apply for the same types of home loan products as any other home loan applicant, including:

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

Your odds of getting final loan approval, however, will typically depend on your financial situation, including things like:

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

As a practicing nurse, depending on your income and financial circumstances, you could be eligible for home loan offers including lower interest rates and LMI waivers. This is because most medical professionals are viewed as ‘low-risk’ borrowers by many lenders, owing to their relatively high income and stable employment.

If you’re applying for a home loan as a nurse and want to take advantage of home loan deals for nurses such as LMI waivers or lower interest rates, you may be asked to prove you’re a licensed and working nurse first.

This should be fairly straightforward; you’ll just be required to show proof that you work as a nurse at a hospital, medical facility or medical practice, such as proof of income (i.e. your payslips).

Nurses ostensibly have to pay LMI just like any other home loan applicant, but having at least a 5% deposit saved could make a nurse eligible to receive an LMI waiver from the lender they’re working with.

While a home loan applicant would typically need at least a 20% deposit, and an LVR of 80% to avoid paying LMI, nurses could potentially avoid paying LMI even with an LVR as high as 95%.

A relatively small home loan deposit could cost you in other ways, though, even if you don’t have to pay LMI – the larger your loan amount, the larger your home loan repayments will be. On the other hand, if you’d saved a larger home loan deposit, you’d be able to borrow less and have smaller ongoing home loan repayments.

That being said, you may decide that, based on your financial goals and priorities, larger home loan repayments are a price worth paying for sooner homeownership.

Nurses, and some other types of healthcare workers, may be able to avoid paying LMI on a new home loan, depending on their saved deposit and the lender they choose to work with. Some lenders may not offer waived LMI to nurses or midwives.

That being said, if you’re applying with a lender that does offer LMI waivers to nurses, you may just need 5% of the purchase price saved in order to avoid paying LMI.

Not having to pay LMI on a new home loan could potentially save nurses thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars depending on their loan amount and saved deposit amount.

The table below displays some example LMI amounts a nurse (or any other borrower) would pay as a first home buyer, based on varying property values and deposit amounts: