Mortgage Broker Brisbane: Former Bankers, 40+ Lenders, Equity Release

Mortgage Broker Brisbane: Former Bankers, 40+ Lenders, Equity Release

Brisbane has just done something it had not done in this cycle, and something every Brisbane mortgage broker now has to plan around: it has fallen back for four months from a peak. Cotality’s Home Value Index puts the median dwelling value at $1,048,880 as at 30 September 2026, down 1.5% in September and 5.4% below the May peak, while the annual figure still reads 5.9% up and the five year figure 55.4% up. It calls for a different loan: owners hold equity built over five years of growth, less what the falls since May have taken back, and buyers pay Queensland duty at a median that is now the second highest of any capital. This page is for people borrowing in Brisbane in the second half of 2026, written by former bankers who price the same file across more than 40 lenders.

Why choose Everstone as your mortgage broker in Brisbane

Most of the work that decides a Brisbane file happens before a valuation is ordered, and that is where Everstone earns its place as your mortgage broker in Brisbane. We ask for the FloodWise Property Report first, we know which lenders are comfortable with an elevated timber Queenslander in Wilston or a small unit in a New Farm tower and which are not, and we lodge with the right one the first time. The people doing that are Ahmed Lotfi and Zappelin Heng, the founders, former bankers who spent years assessing files on the credit side of the desk and who run each Brisbane file personally.

Because the panel is national, a Brisbane mortgage broker does not need a city office to price your loan across more than 40 lenders, and the process is built for it: appointments by video or phone, documents as PDFs, identity verified by video and settlement electronic under Queensland’s eConveyancing mandate. Owners using the equity Brisbane’s five-year run has built, buyers paying Queensland duty at the $1,048,880 median, first home buyers using the 5% Deposit Scheme on a unit under the $1,000,000 cap, interstate investors, expats coming home and the professions lenders price differently are all files we already run in Wynnum, Alderley, Everton Park, Wilston, New Farm and Teneriffe. The service costs you nothing, because the lender pays us on settlement at the same rate whichever lender you choose, and Everstone is rated 5.0 on Google from 14 reviews (October 2026).

How it works: four steps with a Brisbane mortgage broker

1. Book the call. A free video or phone appointment with a former banker, covering income, deposit or equity, the property and, for a purchase, the flood category of the block.
2. Documents by email. Payslips, statements, the contract or your current loan statements, all as PDFs; identity is verified by video.
3. Lender choice and pre-approval. The LVR is run on today’s valuation, the file is priced across more than 40 lenders, and we lodge with the lender whose policy suits the property and carry it to pre-approval.
4. Settlement. Queensland settlements run electronically under the eConveyancing mandate, and we stay on the file until the purchase or the equity release settles.

Three years up, four months down: what Brisbane owners are holding

On Cotality’s index Brisbane dwelling values are 55.4% higher than five years ago and 105.3% higher than ten years ago, and the peak was May 2026. Since then the city has given back 5.4% and September’s 1.5% fall was the largest of any capital in the month. A market that grew that much and has now turned is a refinancing market before it is a buying market.

The index has done the deposit work for you. On the index alone, before a single repayment, a home bought five years ago with a 20% deposit now sits at roughly 51% LVR on the same loan balance (0.80 divided by 1.554). A purchase made twelve months ago at 90% sits at about 85% (0.90 divided by 1.059), still above the line where lenders mortgage insurance stops being a question. That second group has the most reason to have the LVR run now, because one more quarter like the last would take them back toward 89%.

Equity release is a valuation question first and a structure question second. As a rule lenders will lend to 80% of their valuation without lenders mortgage insurance, so usable equity is 80% of the valuation minus what you owe. On a home valued at $1,100,000 with $620,000 owing, that is $260,000 before serviceability is tested. Whether it funds a Queenslander renovation, an investment deposit or the consolidation of dearer debt, the release should sit in its own loan split, which keeps the interest clean for your accountant and stops two purposes being tangled into one security.

Dropping LMI is the cheapest refinance there is, and valuers have noticed the turn. If your loan was written above 80% and the lender’s valuation now puts you under it, the new loan would not normally carry LMI and you can price the whole panel on rate. Above 80% the sequence reverses: get the valuation first, because a refinance that lands between 80% and 90% may attract LMI again, and a failed application leaves a credit enquiry behind. Four months below the peak and advertised stock across the capitals 23.1% higher than a year ago make valuers conservative by instruction, and whether a lender will accept an automated valuation or insist on a full inspection differs for an elevated timber home in Wilston and a new townhouse in Everton Park. Our refinance guide, the best refinance home loan page and the break costs guide cover the rest of the decision.

In short: a Brisbane owner who bought with a 20% deposit a year or more ago is, on the index alone, at 76% LVR or lower and can usually refinance or release equity on today’s valuation; an owner who bought at or near the May 2026 peak should have the LVR run before applying anywhere; and after four months of falls, the valuation belongs before the application, because it sets the LVR the lender prices from.

Run your Brisbane equity and LVR with a former banker, free

Brisbane equity and refinance check

Enter the year you bought, what you paid, today’s estimated value and what you still owe. The check returns growth, equity, LVR, usable equity at 80% LVR, your lenders mortgage insurance position, and the LVR if Brisbane values fall by another quarter like the last one or by 10%. Assumptions sit under the results.

Queensland transfer duty at Brisbane prices: three rates, one table

Queensland charges transfer duty on a schedule set by the Queensland Revenue Office, and unlike New South Wales it runs two rate tables for a home. The standard rate applies to anyone who will not live in the property. The home concession rate applies to an owner occupier who moves in within one year of settlement, whether or not they have owned before, and saves up to $7,175. A first home buyer of an established home under $800,000 deducts a further first home concession of up to $17,350, tapering to nothing at $800,000. A first home buyer of a new home pays nothing at all: for contracts dated 1 May 2025 or later the first home (new home) concession reduces duty to nil with no value cap. The table applies them at Brisbane price points, on QRO’s rates for each $100 or part of $100.

Standard rate: $17,325 plus $4.50 per $100 over $540,000 up to $1,000,000, then $38,025 plus $5.75 per $100 over $1,000,000. Home concession rate: $10,150 plus $4.50 per $100 over $540,000, then $30,850 plus $5.75 per $100 over $1,000,000. Every home concession requires you to move in within one year of settlement and, for transactions from 1 August 2026, to be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or specified foreign retiree. Foreign persons pay additional foreign acquirer duty of 8% on top. QRO rates page last updated 25 June 2026.

Two Brisbane lessons sit in that table. The home concession has obligations with teeth: sell, transfer or lease the whole property within a year of moving in and QRO reassesses the duty. And the new home concession has no cap: a first home buyer signing for a $1,100,000 new townhouse in Everton Park pays no duty, while the same buyer paying $1,100,000 for an established Queenslander three streets away pays $36,600 with the home concession. Add the Queensland first home owner grant, $30,000 for contracts signed on or after 20 November 2023 on a new home valued under $750,000, and new versus established is the first question we ask a Brisbane first home buyer.

The 5% Deposit Scheme and the $1,000,000 Brisbane cap

From 1 October 2025 the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme has no income caps, unlimited places and no waitlist, and the government guarantee means an eligible buyer with a 5% deposit does not pay lenders mortgage insurance. Loans are written only through participating lenders, and once a lender pre-approves you there are 90 days to sign a contract. Price caps apply by location: for Queensland, Housing Australia’s price cap table gives $1,000,000 for Brisbane and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast regional centres, and $700,000 for the rest of the state.

In Brisbane the cap draws a sharp line. The median dwelling, at $1,048,880, is above it, and so is every house median in the six suburbs we work in. The unit medians are a different story: Wynnum at $827,000, Alderley at $838,000, Everton Park at $924,000 and Wilston at $967,000 fit under $1,000,000, while New Farm at $1,016,350 and Teneriffe at $1,095,000 do not. In Brisbane the scheme is a unit, townhouse and new estate scheme, and it stacks: a first home buyer signing for a $900,000 new townhouse can put down $45,000, pay no lenders mortgage insurance under the guarantee, and pay no transfer duty under the new home concession.

Where the $1.05 million median lives: six Brisbane sub-markets we already work in

The suburbs we already work in show how far a Brisbane median stretches; each has its own page, and the figures are the Cotality medians those pages carry.

• Wilston, $2,050,000 house median sale price and $967,000 units (May 2026): elevated timber Queenslanders around Wilston State School, where valuations on post-and-stump character homes move between banks.
• New Farm, $1,900,000 houses and $1,016,350 units (June 2026): a riverside peninsula where around 5,485 units outnumber about 1,530 houses, so lender rules on tower exposure, floor size and density decide more files than the rate does.
• Teneriffe, $1,700,000 houses and $1,095,000 units (June 2026): woolstore conversions and newer towers, where the unit median has risen close to 90% in five years and the valuation is the swing factor.
• Alderley, $1,683,000 houses and $838,000 units (June 2026): inner north west on the Ferny Grove line, where a 20% deposit on a house is more than $330,000 and the real choice is LMI, a guarantor or equity from a home you already hold.
• Wynnum, $1,350,000 houses and $827,000 units (June 2026): bayside on the Cleveland line about 14km east of the GPO, where waterfront and renovated character homes value differently from one lender to the next.
• Everton Park, $1,255,000 house median sale price and $924,000 units (May 2026): post-war homes on the hills and new townhouses along South Pine Road, house values up around 62% in five years, where the new home concession and the scheme cap do the most work.

Cotality’s August tables rank Greater Brisbane’s statistical regions by annual change in dwelling values, and the leaders are not the inner east: Sherwood to Indooroopilly rose 17.3% to a median of $1,146,034, Beenleigh 14.9%, Loganlea to Carbrook 14.7%, Sandgate 14.6% to $1,114,014, and Forest Lake to Oxley 14.0%. That is where the last year’s growth concentrated, and where the equity release conversations are happening now. The full list of areas we cover is on our locations page.

Flood overlays: the Brisbane check that happens before the valuation

Every Brisbane file has a step that a Sydney or Melbourne file does not. Brisbane City Council publishes a Flood Awareness Map for every address in the Brisbane local government area, showing the likelihood of river, creek and storm tide flooding in four categories: high, a 1 in 20 chance in any year (5%); medium, 1 in 100 (1%); low, 1 in 500 (0.2%); and very low, 1 in 2,000 (0.05%). It also shows the impact of overland flow and carries a layer showing the February 2022 flood. From the same address search you can generate a FloodWise Property Report in about 20 seconds, the technical document that carries estimated flood levels and habitable floor level requirements under Brisbane City Plan 2014.

We ask for the FloodWise report on a Brisbane property before a valuation is ordered. It frames the building insurance quote, which belongs in the budget before finance goes unconditional, and it means we know the flood category from the council rather than from the valuer’s report. The map only covers the Brisbane local government area, so a Logan, Moreton Bay, Ipswich or Redland address needs its own council’s information. None of this is a reason not to buy in a flood category; it is a reason to buy with the number in front of you.

Interstate buyers, investors and the 2032 build that keeps arriving

Queensland’s population reached 5,712,100 at 31 December 2025, up 92,200 or 1.6% in a year, and 16,528 of that growth was net interstate migration on the ABS count. The Queensland Government’s 2032 Delivery Plan, released on 25 March 2025, sets out a $7.1 billion program of 17 new or upgraded venues, including a 63,000 seat Brisbane Stadium at Victoria Park, an athlete village at the RNA Showgrounds to be converted to permanent housing after the Games, and the Gabba to become a housing and entertainment precinct after 2032, alongside a Commonwealth transport commitment the government puts at $12.4 billion.

What that means for a loan is narrower than the headlines. The build is a demand story, not a forecast, and the published bank views on our Brisbane forecast page (Domain’s 3 to 7% rise in house prices to June 2027, Commonwealth Bank’s moderation to about 4% a year by the end of 2027, both as they stood in mid-August 2026) were written before the August and September falls extended the softening. For a buyer arriving from Sydney or Melbourne: get pre-approval before you fly up; if the deposit is coming from equity in a southern home, build the two loans as separate securities rather than cross-collateralised, and check the southern LVR on today’s index first, because Sydney is 8.6% below its February peak; and if you are selling in Sydney and buying in Brisbane on different dates, a bridging loan can carry the gap, with the Sydney page covering the selling side.

For investors the September numbers are mixed. Brisbane’s gross rental yield sits at 3.5% on Cotality’s index, and the national vacancy rate of 2.0% is the highest since January 2025 but still well under the pre-COVID decade average of 3.3%. Against that, Brisbane sales volumes are more than 20% below a year ago, and Cotality expects the tax changes in the May 2026 federal budget to push investors toward higher yielding property. At 3.5%, rent covers less of the repayment than in Perth at 4.0% or Darwin at 6.5%, so a Brisbane investment loan is a serviceability question before it is a rate question; the investment loan rates guide sets out how lender policies on rental income and assessment floors differ.

Expats coming home to Brisbane, and the 8% that citizens do not pay

Queensland charges additional foreign acquirer duty, an extra 8%, on residential land bought by a foreign person. A foreign individual is anyone who is not an Australian citizen or permanent resident; a New Zealand citizen on a special category visa is not liable. So an Australian citizen working in Singapore, London or Dubai who buys back into Brisbane pays the same duty as a neighbour who never left, and if it is a first home can claim the first home concessions on the same terms, including nil duty on a new home. The complication is a partner who is not a citizen or permanent resident: QRO’s own example has one partner’s 75% share getting the concession and the other’s 25% share charged full duty plus the 8%.

The rule an expat trips over is the move-in obligation. Every Queensland home concession requires you to move into the property within one year of settlement, and the year cannot be extended, so an expat buying eighteen months ahead of a return, or planning to rent the home out until they come back, is assessed at the standard rate. On the lending side, how much of your foreign income a lender counts, in which currency and at which tax rate, differs materially between lenders, and on a Brisbane loan size that alone can decide the purchase. Our expat home loans guide covers the income treatment and the process step by step.

Brisbane professions lenders price differently

Lenders write specific policy for several of the professions Brisbane’s hospitals and schools employ. Nurses and midwives, teachers and a number of other registered professions can, with the right lender, access higher loan to value ratios and waived lenders mortgage insurance, which can be worth far more than a rate discount: on a $1,000,000 purchase the gap between a 10% and a 20% deposit is $100,000 of cash. Eligibility is specific to each lender and to how your income is paid, including shift allowances and overtime, so the detail lives on the profession pages: nurses and midwives and teachers and educators. Those benefits apply to buyers living and working in Australia; they do not apply to purchases made from overseas.

Why a Melbourne-based broker for a Brisbane loan

Because the panel is national and the postcode that matters is the lender’s. Everstone is an online mortgage broker with more than 40 lenders on the panel, and a Brisbane file is priced across all of them rather than against the product list of the nearest branch. Appointments are by video or phone, documents move as PDFs, identity is verified by video, and settlement runs electronically under Queensland’s eConveyancing mandate, so the process for a client in Wynnum is the same as for a client in South Yarra. What a branch cannot give you is a team of former bankers who have sat on the credit side of the desk, know how each lender treats an elevated timber home, a small inner-city apartment or a flood-category block, and order the valuation with the right lender the first time. We are paid by the lender on settlement, at the same rate whichever lender you choose, and nothing by you; the what a mortgage broker costs page explains how that works.

Book a free Brisbane home loan appointment by video with a former banker

Who you will be talking to

The people behind Everstone

A home loan is one of the largest financial decisions most people make. Here is who will actually be working on yours.

Ahmed Lotfi

Mortgage Broker & Co-Founder

A former major bank lender who now works entirely for you. Ahmed runs the file personally: structure, lender selection and the negotiation with the credit desk. English, Arabic and French.

Zappelin Heng

Mortgage Broker & Co-Founder

Co-founder with deep lender experience, focused on getting complex and self-employed files assessed on their real strength, not a tick-box, including business owners and investors with multiple securities.

Business owners buying their own premises can read our commercial property loans Brisbane guide, which covers Queensland duty and land tax on sheds, suites and shopfronts, SMSF purchases and refinancing.

Brisbane mortgage broker FAQs

Brisbane guides worth reading before you borrow

• Brisbane property market forecast 2027: what the banks and portals actually expect, updated with the September data.
• Median and average house prices in Australia: Brisbane against every other capital on the same index.
• Deposit needed by city: the cash required at each capital’s median.
• Home loan break costs: what leaving a fixed rate costs before you refinance.
• What a mortgage broker costs: how broker remuneration works and why the service is free to you.

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