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First Home Buyers

First home loans for people who work shifts

Police, paramedics, firefighters and nurses. Your overtime can count, your deposit may be smaller than you think, and the mistakes that cost you happen before you find a property.

A weatherboard Australian home of the kind first home buyers in the emergency services are buying
If This Sounds Familiar

You're being knocked back by a calculator, not by a person.

Most first home buyers in the emergency services have never actually asked. They've put a number into a bank's online calculator, seen what came back, and quietly decided the answer is no.

That calculator has one box for income. It doesn't know what your overtime is worth, how your shift penalties are treated, or that there is more than one way into a home with less than twenty per cent down.

I spent ten years on the other side of that decision. The difference between a no and a yes is usually which lender was asked, not whether the person could afford it.

Find out what you can borrow
More Than One Way In

There isn't one door into a first home.
There are several.

Almost everyone measures themselves against the same yardstick: twenty per cent saved, or come back later. It is the wrong test, and it keeps capable buyers renting for years longer than they need to.

01

An occupation-based LMI waiver

Some lenders waive lenders mortgage insurance outright for particular occupations. The policy is most formalised for nurses, midwives and doctors, and a handful of lenders reach further into essential services. Where it applies it removes a cost that regularly runs well into five figures.

02

A five per cent deposit

Separate to any scheme or waiver, plenty of lenders will simply lend against a five per cent deposit. LMI is payable, but you stop paying rent sooner. Whether that trade works in your favour is arithmetic rather than a rule of thumb, and it depends on your numbers.

03

A government scheme

The First Home Guarantee, the First Home Owner Grant and Victoria's stamp duty concessions are three separate things with three separate sets of rules, and some of them stack. Eligibility and caps are reviewed from time to time, so they are worth checking rather than assuming.

Which of these is open to you comes down to your job, your deposit and your timing, and it is rarely the one people assume. Working out which door is yours costs nothing and takes one conversation.

What Changes the Picture

Three things worth knowing
before you decide you can't

Payslips and paperwork on a desk, the shift income a lender assesses

Your overtime can count

Base wage is only part of what you earn. Overtime, shift penalties and allowances can all be assessed as income. How much of it a lender counts varies enormously, and that variation is where the work is.

Keys to a first home, bought with a smaller deposit than most buyers assume they need

Your deposit may be smaller than you think

Twenty per cent is the figure almost everyone assumes. There are two separate routes into a home with less, and which one applies to you depends on the job you do.

An Australian home, the kind of first purchase planned months before the search begins

The costly mistakes happen early

Before you find a property, not after. How you hold your savings, what you do about a car loan or a buy-now-pay-later account, and when you apply all move what you're able to borrow.

The Deposit

Two of those three skip LMI entirely,
and they work differently

This gets blurred into one claim a lot: that emergency services workers can buy with a smaller deposit. It isn't accurate enough to survive a real conversation, so here's the honest version.

Lender LMI waivers

Occupation-based, and most formalised for nurses, midwives and doctors, who can often borrow a higher percentage of a property's value without paying lenders mortgage insurance.

If you work in healthcare, this is usually your route, and the answer is normally a clean one.

The First Home Guarantee

A government scheme rather than a lender policy. It's need-based rather than occupation-based, and it gets eligible first home buyers in with a far smaller deposit and no LMI.

For most police, paramedics and firefighters, this is the route that applies.

Knowing which one applies to you, and what each actually requires, is the difference between a plan and a guess. Government scheme eligibility and caps change from time to time, so we'll check where they stand the day we talk.

By Profession

How your income is read
depends on the job you do

The deposit routes and the way a payslip is assessed differ by profession. Pick yours for the detail that applies to you.

Police

Shift penalties, overtime and court time, and why the Guarantee is usually your route.

Paramedics

On-call, overtime and salary packaging, read four different ways by four lenders.

Firefighters

Career and retained income are assessed completely differently. Here is how.

Nurses & Midwives

The LMI waiver is usually a clean yes. Most nurses have never been told it exists.
Access to 45+ Lenders Including
Common Questions

First home buyer questions

The ones we're asked most by people buying their first place on a shift worker's income.

It depends entirely on the lender. Some apply a conservative percentage, some count considerably more, and a few will assess consistent, well-documented overtime close to in full.

The same payslip can produce materially different borrowing capacity depending on who assesses it. Knowing which lender treats your income how is most of the job.

Often not. There are two separate routes into a home with less, set out above: occupation-based LMI waivers, which are most formalised in healthcare, and the First Home Guarantee, which is need-based and covers most of the emergency services.

Which one applies to you depends on your job and your circumstances, and we'll work that out before you start looking.

Yes, and usually by more than people expect. A novated lease in particular has a cost in borrowing capacity that's worth understanding before you sign one, not after.

Buy-now-pay-later accounts count too, including the ones you've forgotten about.

Before. The decisions that cost people money happen in the months before they find somewhere, not in the week after.

How you hold your savings, whether you clear a debt or keep it, and the timing of your application all move the number you're working with.

They sit separately to the lending, and the rules differ by state. In Victoria there are concessions available to first home buyers that are worth real money, with their own eligibility rules and thresholds.

We'll tell you what you're likely to be eligible for and where to confirm it, rather than guess.

Start Here

Find out what you can actually borrow

A fifteen-minute conversation, worked around your roster. No obligation, and an honest answer either way.

Early, late or around your roster. See everything else we help with, or read how the process works.

Ready to Get Started?

Let's review your finances
and get them in order

Book a quick, no obligation chat with Kosta. We'll work around your roster, because we know your schedule isn't 9 to 5, and you'll get an honest answer either way.

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0476 805 082
kosta@code1finance.com.au