Home Loans for Self-Employed Borrowers

If you’re a sole trader, contractor, company director or partner in a partnership, you’ve probably already discovered that lenders treat your income very differently from a PAYG salary. They want two years of tax returns, often add back certain expenses or strip out others, treat add-backs inconsistently between lenders, and may discount your income if it varies year-to-year. The same household income from PAYG would be assessed in a fraction of the time.

Different lenders take very different views on self-employed income. Some lenders use only the most recent year’s income (good for borrowers whose income has grown). Some average two years (good for steady income). Some add back depreciation, motor vehicle expenses and superannuation contributions. Some don’t. Choosing the right lender for your specific income shape can change your approved loan amount by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There are also alternative documentation (alt doc / low doc) loans designed specifically for self-employed borrowers who can’t (or don’t want to) provide two years of full financials. These use BAS statements, an accountant’s letter, business bank statements or a combination — at slightly higher rates than full doc, but with much faster approval and less paperwork.

We start by understanding how your business income actually flows. That means reading your last two years of tax returns and financials, identifying the add-backs that different lenders will accept, looking at how your income trend (growth, decline or steady) will be viewed, and identifying whether full-doc or alt-doc lending fits your situation better.

Then we narrow to the lenders most likely to approve at the best terms. For some borrowers, that’s a major bank with generous add-back policies and competitive rates. For others — particularly those whose most recent tax return doesn’t reflect their current income — it’s a specialist lender with a more flexible alt-doc approach. We’ve placed loans across both ends of the spectrum.

We work in partnership with your accountant. Often we’ll have technical conversations with them directly about how the financials are presented — what’s normalised, what’s a one-off, what’s been treated as drawings rather than wages. This level of engagement is what gets self-employed loans approved cleanly rather than getting stuck in conditions and queries.