14/10/2025
A small but very crucial change is coming to First Home Buyers. Heres why it’s important:
At the moment banks are allowed to let 20% of mortgages volume proceed with less than 20% deposit. Currently they only allow circa 15-18% to allow a buffer in the event clients who are pre-approved (approval with no specific property) all buy at the same time. In simple terms they have to account for the “tire kickers” as most people who get pre-approved, don’t actually go through with the loan. This makes it very hard for banks to predict, and is why banks will often stop offering pre-approvals for a period of time.
These rules have limited banks ability to offer pre-approvals to those with less than 20%. However from December 1, this limit will shift to 25%, a small change however an important one that will support a bank to offer pre-approvals to their customers and perhaps those at other competing banks.
Right now most banks will offer this if you’re an existing customer, however we want to see more lenders offering less than 20% pre-approvals to non-customers to improve access to those that don’t fit the criteria of their existing bank.
