Home loans for public servants

How lenders view public servants

Government employment is about as stable as lenders get. Classification-based pay is easy to verify, and ongoing employment is treated as low risk across the panel.

Two lenders assessing the identical payslip can arrive at borrowing power figures more than $100,000 apart, purely from policy differences. Choosing the lender whose policy matches your income shape is worth far more than shaving a few basis points off the rate.

Income lenders will assess for public servants

• Base salary by APS or state classification level, with verifiable increments.
• Allowances: higher-duties, shift, on-call and location allowances.
• Non-ongoing and labour-hire contracts, treated differently to ongoing appointments.
• Salary packaging where available, grossed up by lenders that recognise it.

Advantages available to public servants

• Very high employment stability, which supports approval even at higher LVRs.
• Higher-duties and ongoing allowances counted where they've been consistent for 6–12 months.
• Some lenders and mutuals offer government-employee pricing or fee concessions.

Lenders mortgage insurance

There's no standard occupation-based LMI waiver for your profession, but a 5% deposit is still achievable through the First Home Guarantee, and a family guarantor can remove LMI entirely.

Common mistakes we see

• Non-ongoing contracts being read as temporary employment where a lender lacks renewal policy.
• Higher-duties allowance being excluded because it isn't guaranteed to continue.
• HECS/HELP debt on graduate-entry salaries constraining surplus more than expected.

What to have ready before you apply

• Two recent payslips showing year-to-date gross, plus your latest income statement or PAYG summary.
• Three months of transaction statements for every account, including any buy-now-pay-later facility.
• Details of all debts and credit limits — lenders assess the limit, not the balance.
• For self-employed income: the last one to two years of tax returns and notices of assessment.
• Evidence of your deposit, its source, and how long it's been held.

How much could you borrow?

Our borrowing power calculator assesses at a 3% serviceability buffer, the same way a lender does, and applies a HEM living-expense floor. It's an estimate — the number that matters is the one from the lender whose policy best fits public servants — but it's a realistic starting point.

If you'd rather skip the guesswork, a 15-minute chat gets you a lender-specific figure with the policy quirks already applied.