Home Loans for Nurses in Australia: 10% Deposit, No LMI (2026 Guide)

August 2026: the pay landscape just moved in nurses’ favour

Two things happened in August 2026 that change the borrowing picture for nurses and midwives. The fifth and final aged care pay increase took effect: a senior aged care Registered Nurse now sits at $71.35 an hour, and a mid-level RN has gained roughly $36,000 a year since 2022. And a University of Sydney survey of more than 2,000 nurses and midwives found two in three often think about leaving the profession, with 48 per cent already looking, which tells you how hard the work is that earned those rises.

For a lender, the distinction that matters is that award increases are permanent pay, not a bonus: pay a lender can count in full. As a rule of thumb, every $10,000 of extra salary can support up to roughly $50,000 of additional borrowing under a debt-to-income cap of five, subject to full serviceability assessment. If your last borrowing conversation happened before the increases finished landing, your number is stale in your favour.

Does the 2026 aged care pay rise increase how much I can borrow?

Yes, once it is flowing through your payslips: award increases are permanent pay, which lenders count in full, and as a rule of thumb every $10,000 of extra salary can support up to roughly $50,000 of additional borrowing under a debt-to-income cap of five, subject to full serviceability assessment. If your capacity was last assessed before the final tranche landed, it is worth re-running.

I am thinking about leaving nursing. Should I sort the loan first?

Almost always, yes: lenders assess the file you have on application day, and a permanent nursing income with award rates reads far stronger than the first year of a career change. Arranging finance from the settled role, then moving, preserves the most options, and our guide to how lenders read a career change covers the sequencing in full.

Home Loans for Nurses in Australia: The 10% Deposit, No-LMI Policy Most Nurses Don’t Know About (2026 Guide)

Most nurses we speak to assume they need a 20% deposit before they can buy without paying Lenders Mortgage Insurance. Right across the country they are pulling punishing shifts, racking up overtime and banking penalty rates, all while assuming the same lending rules apply to them as to everyone else. The same full-recognition logic applies to other shift workers, see our guide to home loans for police, firefighters and paramedics. The same logic scales up for resources workers, see our FIFO and mining home loans guide. Update, July 2026: the NSW ruling and the 4.75 per cent award increase are now landing in pays, and our nurses pay rise analysis runs what the new payslip does to borrowing power.

They don’t. Over the last two years, largely without fanfare, the major banks have rewritten their home loan policies for nurses and midwives. If you’re a Registered Nurse or Midwife earning at least $90,000, select lenders will let you borrow up to 90% of the property’s value with no LMI, saving $15,000 to $30,000 in upfront costs that most other borrowers have to pay.

And the bigger win, which almost nobody talks about: your overtime and shift allowances can be counted in full, not shaded down like standard policy. That one difference alone can lift how much you can borrow by $100,000 or more.

This 2026 guide walks through how the nurse home loan policies actually work, who qualifies, the income recognition rules that matter most, and how to use them properly when you’re buying in Australia. We’re mortgage brokers based in South Yarra, and these are the conversations we have every week. The same pay-to-borrowing-power arithmetic drives every wage deal in the sector: our piece on the teacher pay fight, priced in borrowing power shows how the maths works for any pay rise.

Buying in Melbourne? See our Home Loans for Nurses Melbourne guide for local examples and Melbourne-specific scenarios.

The headline: 10% deposit, $0 LMI for nurses

Standard borrowers in Australia who put down less than 20% are charged Lenders Mortgage Insurance, a one-off premium that protects the lender (not you) and typically costs $15,000 to $30,000 depending on loan size and LVR.

For Registered Nurses and Midwives on $90,000 or more a year, select lenders will waive it outright up to 90% LVR. At least one major lender sets this offer out openly on its own website, and others run the same or very similar policies, they simply do not market them as loudly. Lists and thresholds change, which is why we check current policy before you apply rather than assume.

The bigger win: how nurse income actually gets counted

This is the part most general brokers miss, and it’s the difference between a loan that lets you buy what you want in Australia and one that doesn’t.

Run your file through ordinary lending policy and the bank discounts your variable income. Overtime, shift allowances, weekend penalties and on-call work, often only 60% to 80% of it ends up counted in the borrowing calculation. For a salaried office worker who lands the odd bonus, that caution is reasonable. For a hospital RN, whose penalty rates and overtime are a built-in, predictable part of the pay packet, it makes very little sense.

For front-line hospital-employed nurses, several major lenders now count 100% of overtime and shift allowances when assessing serviceability. One major lender spells this out directly on its public site. CBA, another major lender and a number of second-tier lenders run comparable rules.

For a nurse earning $95,000 base plus $30,000 in overtime, allowances and penalty rates:

• Under standard policy (variable income shaded to 80%): assessed income around $119,000
• Under nurse specific policy (variable income counted at 100%): assessed income of $125,000
• What it means in practice: in the order of $30,000 to $50,000 in extra borrowing capacity, purely from how the same income is read

The lender, the paperwork and the income do not change. What changes is the policy your file is read under, and choosing where to lodge for your particular income mix is exactly the part a broker is paid to get right.

Who qualifies for a nurse home loan in Australia

The exact lists move around a little from lender to lender, but the shared picture across the major banks through 2026 reads roughly like this:

Generally eligible

• Registered Nurses (RNs)
• Registered Midwives
• Nurse Practitioners
• Clinical Nurse Specialists

Conditionally eligible (lender-dependent)

• Enrolled Nurses: most lenders leave ENs off their medical waiver lists, though the First Home Guarantee frequently delivers the same result, a 5% deposit with no LMI
• Agency or non hospital nurses: some lenders insist on hospital employment
• Casual nurses: eligible at most lenders, with casual earnings assessed over a 48-week base

Income threshold

As a rule of thumb, lenders look for at least $90,000 a year in total assessable income from a nurse. If your base wage alone falls short but overtime and allowances carry you past that line, you can generally still qualify, provided the income is evidenced cleanly across recent payslips.

A documented example. Westpac publishes its policy openly: registered nurses and midwives earning $90,000 a year or more can borrow with the LMI waived up to 90% LVR, and casual income is annualised over 52 weeks for waiver applicants. Several other lenders run comparable policies with their own profession lists and conditions, which is exactly why the file is worth placing deliberately rather than defaulting to whoever you bank with.

Nurses employed overseas

One point of scope is worth stating plainly, because it is easy to read a page like this and assume it covers you. The nurse-specific policy is written around Australian employment. An Australian nurse who is living and working overseas is assessed under expat and non-resident lending rules instead, and does not get the nurse-specific benefit described on this page.

That is a different door rather than a closed one, and it is one we work on regularly. Expat and non-resident lending runs on its own set of rules, which we have written up separately: start with Australian expat home loans if you are an Australian abroad, and see buying property in Australia from overseas if you are buying into Australia from another country. If you later come back to a nursing role here, the nurse policy can be worth checking again at that point.

Graduate and new-grad nurses

The graduate year is the one stage where a professional waiver often does not fit, and the reason is income rather than registration. A nurse in a graduate or transition-to-practice year is normally a Registered Nurse with AHPRA registration already in hand, so the professional side of the test is satisfied. What frequently is not satisfied is the income threshold above, because a graduate base wage plus a part year of shift loadings tends to land under it.

Two things follow from that. First, a graduate nurse is often better served by the First Home Guarantee route than by the professional waiver, at least for a first purchase. Second, the picture can change fast: once a full year of penalty rates and overtime is showing on payslips, the same applicant can be read very differently. If you are close to the line it is worth having the file looked at rather than assuming the answer, and worth arranging finance while the graduate role is settled rather than mid-rotation.

Agency nurses and nurses working under their own ABN

Agency work is the most common reason a well-paid nurse is knocked back from a waiver they would otherwise clear. Plenty of lender policies are written around direct hospital employment, so a nurse placed on a ward through an agency can be standing beside a colleague who fits the policy while sitting outside it. Nurses invoicing through their own ABN sit further out again, because the file then gets assessed as self-employed rather than as a wage earner.

That is not the end of the conversation, it just changes which door you use. Agency nurses regularly get where they wanted to go through the First Home Guarantee, a family guarantor structure or ordinary high-LVR lending, and the work shifts from hunting for a waiver to evidencing the income cleanly: consistent placements, a documented history and, for ABN nurses, the paperwork that lets a lender treat the earnings as ongoing. Agency contracts differ and so do lender readings of them, so this is worth a proper policy check rather than an assumption.

What else you get with a nurse home loan

The waiver grabs the headline, but the wider professional package usually brings more with it:

• Sharper interest rates, commonly 0.10% to 0.20% under the lender standard variable rate, held for the life of the loan
• A 100% offset account as standard, which can quietly save tens of thousands in interest over the years you hold the loan
• Waived or reduced package fees at a number of lenders
• The same waiver on investment properties at most lenders, handy if you intend to keep building a portfolio
• Quicker credit assessment at lenders that run dedicated medical or healthcare teams

Common scenarios we see in Australia

To make this concrete, here are the situations nurses most often come to us with:

Home buying programs for nurses: what actually exists in Australia

There is no single government scheme called a nurse home loan, and that is where most of the confusion starts. What people are usually after when they search for home buying programs for nurses is four separate things, run by four different parties, that a nurse can line up against each other. Here is the whole map in one place.

• Lender-run professional waivers. Written by individual banks rather than by government. This is the 90% LVR, no-LMI policy covered above, and it is the only one of the four that turns on your occupation at all.
• The federal Home Guarantee Scheme. Open to eligible first home buyers whatever their job, buying with as little as a 5% deposit and no LMI, subject to eligibility and property price caps.
• State first home owner grants and stamp duty concessions. Set by each state and territory, so what a nurse saves here depends on where the property is, not on where they work. The state-by-state thresholds are set out further down this page.
• Employer-linked salary packaging. Not a buying scheme at all, but for nurses at public and not-for-profit health services it changes assessable income, and the lenders that read health sector packaging properly will treat it as income rather than ignore it.

The practical point is that these are weighed against each other rather than ticked off in order. A nurse with a 10% deposit buying above a state concession threshold usually wants the lender waiver. A nurse with a 5% deposit buying under the cap usually wants the guarantee. And because the state layer swings the answer hardest, the arithmetic looks different city by city: we run the Victorian version of it for nurses in Melbourne, where the duty thresholds sit well below what much of that city costs.

Stacking with the First Home Guarantee scheme

If you are an Enrolled Nurse, a casual not yet at the $90k mark, or you simply favour a 5% deposit, the federal First Home Guarantee is well worth understanding as an alternative.

The First Home Guarantee lets eligible first home buyers anywhere in Australia buy with a 5% deposit and no LMI, whatever their job, with the government guaranteeing the gap. You use it instead of the medical waiver rather than alongside it, and for nurses who sit just outside the medical criteria it can be the better of the two doors.

From October 2025 the scheme runs without income caps or place limits, and whether the 10% medical waiver or the 5% First Home Guarantee wins comes down to your actual numbers. We model both before pointing you at one.

Refinancing as a nurse: what to check when you already own

Most of this page is written for a nurse who is buying. A large share of the nurses who come to us already own, and refinancing is the single biggest type of application we handle. It matters more for nurses than for most borrowers, because the policies described above did not exist in their current form when many nurses took out their loans, and a lender rarely goes back to an existing customer to say the rules have moved.

You bought before you qualified. This is the most common version of it. A nurse who was a graduate, casual, part time or simply under the income threshold at the time was assessed under ordinary policy, so the overtime and allowances were shaded down and the LMI was paid in full. Several years of shifts later, the same person can look very different on paper. Whether a profession policy fits now depends on your role, your employer, your income mix and the lender, so it can be worth having the file looked at rather than assuming the answer is the one you were given last time.

Releasing equity. If the property has gone up and the loan has come down, refinancing is how you reach part of the difference, and nurses most often use it for a renovation, a deposit on a second property or clearing a more expensive debt. What is actually available turns on the valuation, the lender’s limits and what you can service, so it is a numbers conversation rather than a rule of thumb. Income recognition matters here as well, because a lender that counts your penalty rates in full can see more servicing capacity than one that shades them, which is the same policy difference that drives the purchase side.

Consolidating other debts. Folding a car loan, a personal loan or a card balance into the home loan can bring the total monthly commitment down, because home loan interest is generally charged at a lower rate than personal loan or credit card interest. The trade-off is worth saying out loud rather than burying: a short debt stretched across a long loan term can cost more in total interest even while the monthly figure falls, so it only makes sense alongside a plan to pay that portion down faster. Lenders differ on which debts they will consolidate and on what they want to see, so this one varies.

Moving from interest only to principal and interest. Nurses with an investment property often set the loan up interest only, and an interest only period does not run forever. When it ends the repayment steps up, because the principal now has to be cleared over the years that are left rather than over the full original term. Refinancing at that point, or better, before it, is how you choose the outcome instead of being handed it. Whether extending, switching to principal and interest or splitting the loan suits you depends on your own position, and it is worth modelling before the change lands rather than after.

If refinancing is new ground, our guide to refinancing in plain English walks through what actually happens and in what order, and when to refinance a home loan deals with the timing question, including the cases where staying put is the better call. If you would rather see the numbers before you speak to anyone, put your current loan through our refinance savings calculator and look at what a switch does to your own figures.

None of this is automatic. Refinancing takes time and paperwork, there can be costs in leaving your current loan, and there are files where the honest answer is to stay where you are. The point is narrower than that: a nurse who has not looked at their loan since it settled is often still sitting on an assessment made under rules that have since changed, and that is worth a check rather than an assumption.

Why use a mortgage broker for nurses instead of going straight to your bank

Your own bank can only ever quote you its own policy. If that bank shades your overtime to 80% and does not run a nurse waiver, that is simply the answer you get, and you will never know a better one existed two doors down. A mortgage broker for nurses compares the policies side by side: which lenders waive LMI at 90% for RNs and Midwives, which count overtime and penalty rates at full value, which assess part time hospital income pro rata, and which read salary packaging generously.

We are ex-bankers, so we know how credit teams read a nurse’s payslip and where the discretion sits, and we lodge your file with the lender whose policy already fits it. It is the same lender-policy work we do on dentist home loans and home loans for accountants, applied to nurse income. And it costs you nothing. The lender pays us at settlement, the rate and fees are the same as going direct and often sharper because we argue your file, and every commission is disclosed to you in writing before anything proceeds.

How to get a nurse home loan in Australia: the five-step process

If you have never taken out a home loan as a nurse before, here is how the process actually runs with us:

1. A first call, no documents: we walk through your income mix, savings, timing and goals, and you finish the call knowing what is achievable and which lenders suit your profile.
2. A lender comparison in a few days: the strongest options laid out side by side, covering rate, fees, LMI position, offset features and the fine print of each nurse policy, rather than whichever brand advertised at you most recently.
3. Application and documents: payslips, ID, bank statements and an employment letter from the hospital, with the file prepared and lodged by us
4. Approval and valuation: the lender works through your file and orders a valuation on the property, and on a tidy nurse application formal approval generally comes back inside 5 to 10 business days.
5. Settlement: the loan draws down on the date your contract sets, with us coordinating the lender, your conveyancer and the agent

Frequently asked questions: nurse home loans

Are there special first home buyer programs for nurses?

Yes, and they stack. A nurse buying a first home can potentially combine the government’s Home Guarantee Scheme (buying with as little as 5% deposit and no LMI, subject to eligibility and property price caps), profession-based LMI waivers at select lenders for 10% deposits, state first home owner grants and stamp duty concessions, and full counting of overtime and penalties for borrowing power. Which combination fits depends on your price point, state and income shape, which is exactly what we map in the first conversation, free.

Do nurses get a home loan LMI waiver in Australia?

Yes, at select lenders. As of mid 2026, eligible Registered Nurses and Midwives can borrow up to 90% LVR with no LMI, commonly with a minimum income around $90,000 a year. Lists and thresholds change and not every lender takes part, so we verify current policy before you apply. This can save $15,000 to $30,000 in upfront LMI costs on a typical purchase.

Do I have to be a hospital nurse to qualify for the LMI waiver?

At the major lenders the answer is usually yes, with direct hospital employment the simplest case to get across the line. A handful extend to community and aged care nursing, while agency shifts, clinic roles and self-employed nursing are often left out, so we confirm your exact position lender by lender.

What if I’m a casual nurse?

Casual income is accepted for the waiver at most lenders, worked out over a 48-week base rather than a full 52. You will usually need to show 6 to 12 months of steady shifts with one employer, or in the same role across a few.

Does the nurse LMI waiver apply to investment properties in Australia?

At some lenders, yes: the waiver can carry across to investment purchases under the same policy. A few want your own home financed first, but plenty do not. This is one of the biggest leverage advantages nurses have when building a property portfolio.

I’m an Enrolled Nurse, am I excluded from the LMI waiver?

Most often yes, straight from the medical waiver. Where it does not quite fit, the federal First Home Guarantee reaches the same place, a 5% deposit with no LMI, for eligible first home buyers in any job, and we weigh both routes for you.

Can my partner be a non-nurse and we still get the waiver?

Yes. Where one applicant qualifies under nurse policy and holds a genuine share of the income or equity, many lenders can apply the waiver across the whole loan, so a partner outside healthcare is no barrier.

Will the lender count my penalty rates and shift allowances?

For nurses on a hospital payroll, several major lenders recognise overtime, shift allowances and penalty rates at their full value under healthcare policy, evidenced through your payslips and a recent ATO Notice of Assessment.

Does going through a mortgage broker cost me anything as a nurse?

It costs you nothing. The lender pays us at settlement, the rate and fees match going direct and are frequently sharper because we argue your file, and every commission is disclosed to you in writing before anything proceeds.

How much can a nurse actually borrow in Australia?

The honest answer is that it turns on your base pay, how much of your income is variable, the debts you already carry and the lender you choose. As a rough guide, one registered nurse on a $95k base with $25k of overtime and allowances can usually borrow somewhere between $550,000 and $700,000 under nurse policy, and two nurses together can often clear $1m. A quick first call will give you a real figure for your own situation.

How long does it take to get approved for a nurse home loan?

On a clean nurse file with documents in order, formal approval usually arrives within 5 to 10 business days, and settlement typically follows around 30 days later in line with your contract.

The honest summary

For years, lenders that never really understood healthcare income simply slotted nurses into ordinary borrower policy. That has shifted. The major banks have rewritten the rules, they just rarely tell existing customers, and plenty of general brokers still fail to push the income recognition as far as it can go.

If you’re a Registered Nurse, Midwife or Nurse Practitioner thinking about buying or refinancing in Australia in the next 6 to 12 months, the first move is a quick conversation. No documents, no obligation, no pressure. Just clarity on what’s possible.

Stamp duty for nurses depends on which state you buy in

The LMI waiver is a lender policy, so it works the same way across Australia. Stamp duty does not. Each state and territory sets its own first home buyer thresholds, and they vary widely. Here is roughly where they sit in 2026:

State	No stamp duty up to	Concession up to
VIC	$600,000	$750,000
NSW	$800,000	$1,000,000
QLD	$700,000 established (new builds exempt)	$800,000
WA	$600,000 (from May 2026)	$800,000

SA, TAS, ACT and NT run their own first home buyer schemes with different thresholds. Always confirm the current figure with your state revenue office before you commit.

The other way nurses skip LMI: the First Home Guarantee

If your lender will not waive LMI, there is a federal scheme that removes it a different way. Under the Australian Government First Home Guarantee, eligible first home buyers can buy with as little as a 5% deposit and pay no LMI, because the government guarantees the gap up to 20% so the lender treats the loan as fully secured. From October 2025 the scheme dropped its income caps and place limits, and lifted the property price caps (for example up to $1.5 million in Sydney and $1 million in Brisbane). You still borrow up to 95% of the value, you apply through a participating lender, and you must live in the home. For a nurse who does not qualify for a lender waiver, this is often the cleaner route to a low deposit purchase.

Sources and useful references

• Housing Australia: First Home Guarantee
• ASIC Moneysmart: home loans
• Ahpra: nursing and midwifery registration
• Fair Work Ombudsman: penalty rates, allowances and other payments
• Westpac: home ownership support for nurses and midwives

Investment loans for nurses: can you use the same benefits to buy an investment property?

Often, yes, at select lenders. The profession based benefits on this page are assessed on your nurse income, and several lenders extend them to investment purchases as well as a home, though the deposit and waiver terms for investment lending differ from owner occupied lending and are set on each file. Three things change on an investment file: the lender shades the expected rent, typically counting 70 to 80 per cent of it, investor pricing sits above owner occupier rates, and the deposit you bring decides which desks will look at it. Start with how much deposit an investment property needs and how investment property loan rates are set, then let us map which lenders extend your nurse benefits to an investment purchase.

Related guides

• Home Loans for Doctors: 5% Deposit, No LMI, Loans to $5m
• Home Loans for Dentists
• Home Loans for Accountants: The $40,000 LMI Waiver (EOFY)
• Home Loans for Teachers
• Home Loans for Lawyers
• First Home Buyer Grants & Stamp Duty by State

Salary packaging: the borrowing-power boost most nurses miss

This is the most overlooked advantage nurses have. Public and not-for-profit health workers can salary package a portion of their pay for living expenses, plus a separate meal and entertainment cap, free of fringe benefits tax. Most nurses use it to save tax and never think about it again. But a lender that understands health-sector packaging grosses those benefits back to their pre-tax value when assessing you, which can lift your borrowing power by a worthwhile margin. Not every lender does this, and the ones that do treat it differently, so it pays to be matched to a lender that reads it generously. It is one of the first things we check for a nurse.