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Home Loan Borrowing Power Calculator
Get an instant estimate of how much you could borrow, based on your income, living costs, deposit and anything you already owe. Then see what a few small changes would do to the number. Free, no sign-up, and nothing touches your credit file.
- 60 secTo get your estimate
- 3 leversThat lift the number
- FreeNo sign-up, no credit check
Your household
Salary before tax, not the package. Leave super out — it is not money a lender can count towards repayments. If your offer letter says a total package, divide it by 1.12 first. Include anything steady on top: overtime, bonuses, rent coming in.
The rate you have been offered, if you know it. Lenders then test you at 9.20% — your rate plus the 3% buffer they are required to add.
Groceries, bills, transport, insurance, the fun stuff.
The engine of the number
What is left over is what you can borrow against
Lenders start with your take-home pay, take out living costs and anything you already owe, and lend against what remains. Everything else on this page is detail.
- $3,400Living costs a month
- $5,526Left over a month
Lift the number
Three things that move it
None of these need a new job. Here is what each would add to what you could borrow — tap one to try it.
- $10,000 less in card limits—no card limits entered
- $200 less spending a month+$24kmore you could borrow
- $10,000 more household income+$62kmore you could borrow
A broker has a fourth lever these cannot show you: choosing the lender whose policy suits your situation best. On the same household, that difference is often larger than all three of these put together.
Worth knowing before you start
Every lender answers this question differently
The figure this gives you is a careful, middle-of-the-road estimate. Real lenders vary more than most people expect — the same household can be offered noticeably different amounts depending on who is asking and how their income is read. That is genuinely the main reason people use a broker.
- What is left over drives itLenders look at your take-home pay, subtract living costs and anything you already owe, and lend against what remains. Almost everything else is detail.
- Card limits count, not balancesA card with a $15,000 limit and nothing owing on it is still assessed as though it were being used. Closing one you do not need is the quickest lift available.
- Rates are tested with a bufferLenders check you could still manage if rates rose by around 3%. That is why this figure looks conservative next to what your repayment would actually be.
One number here. A dozen different answers out there.
Lenders read income, bonuses and commitments differently, so what you can actually borrow varies more than most people expect. A broker checks a panel of them in one go, and in most cases the lender pays them rather than you.
What moves the number
Where the extra usually comes from
None of these need a pay rise. They are the first three things a good broker looks at.
Tidy up the cardsLimits you are not using still count against you. Closing or reducing a card you never touch can lift what you could borrow by tens of thousands, and it takes a phone call.The quickest lift
Count all of the incomeOvertime, bonuses, commission, a second job, rent coming in — lenders will count some of it and not others, and the rules differ between them. It is easy to leave money on the table here.Often understated
Pick the right lenderTwo lenders can look at identical households and land a long way apart, because their policies on income, expenses and debts are not the same. This is the lever you cannot pull on your own.Where a broker earns it
Keep going
The rest of the sums
Nothing touches your credit file
This is arithmetic on the numbers you type, worked out in your browser. There is no credit enquiry, no sign-up, and we do not store what you enter.
How the maths works
Income after tax, Medicare and HECS, less the greater of your stated or a benchmark household spend, less card limits at the standard assessment rate — with what remains tested at market rate plus a 3% buffer over 30 years. See our methodology.
What this is
A realistic starting point to plan around. Only a lender can tell you what they will actually approve, and a broker can tell you which lender to ask.
Next step
Got a number? Now for the fun part.
See what the repayments would look like at that size, or go and have a proper look at the suburbs your budget opens up.
An estimate, not an approval. This calculator applies a standard serviceability method to the figures you enter and is not financial or credit advice. The living-expense benchmark is our own and is not the ABA’s Household Expenditure Measure. It excludes lenders mortgage insurance, credit history, loans you have not listed, and the individual policies every lender applies to income, bonuses and commitments. Your actual capacity may be higher or lower. Confirm anything that decides a purchase with a lender or a licensed mortgage broker.