- Clients
- First-home buyer couple
- Circumstances
- One self-employed, spouse on maternity leave
- Focus
- Lender policy & first-home assistance
The Objective
When their landlord decided to sell the home they were renting, a first-home buyer couple found themselves needing to buy sooner than planned. They spent about six months searching for the right property — but the harder question was always going to be the finance.
The Challenge
The self-employed applicant had only one year of tax returns. They were finalised, but not yet lodged — the kind of detail that stops many applications cold. On top of that, the second applicant was on maternity leave. On the surface, this looked like a file destined for specialist lending, with the higher costs that can bring.
What We Did Differently
We didn’t assume specialist lending. Instead, we worked through the policies across our mainstream first home buyer lender options to find one that could genuinely accommodate the couple’s circumstances. One lender’s policy could accept a single year of finalised, unlodged returns — provided the accountant confirmed they were final — and could also assess the maternity-leave position appropriately. We arranged that written confirmation and built the applicable government first-home buyer assistance into the overall strategy.
The Result
After roughly six months of searching, the couple bought their first home with a mainstream lender — not a specialist one — and accessed the government assistance they qualified for. It’s a clear example of how knowing individual lenders’ credit policies creates opportunities where a standard assessment says no. The same policy-first thinking runs through our $4.2M auction story, on a very different scale.
Self-employed and buying your first home?
Lender policy varies widely. The right match can approve what a standard assessment won’t.
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