Can I get a home loan if I have only been self-employed for one year?
The traditional rule is two years of financials: two tax returns, two notices of assessment, and a lender takes the average (or the lower year, if the latest year is down). Most major lenders still work this way, and it produces the best rates.
A growing number of lenders will accept one year of trading if the business has been operating for at least twelve months and you have one full tax return, sometimes with a longer history in the same industry as an employee. Others will work from the last four to six quarters of BAS statements, or from an accountant's declaration, under what is called low-doc or alt-doc lending. Rates are higher and deposits need to be larger, typically twenty per cent or more.
What almost every self-employed applicant gets wrong is the income figure. Lenders can add back depreciation, one-off expenses, interest on loans that will be refinanced, and in some cases superannuation above the compulsory rate. A well-prepared set of financials with add-backs identified can be the difference between a decline and an approval.
Borrowable's self-employed check asks how long you have traded and what you have on file, then sizes the loan on the income a lender is likely to accept.
Want the number for your situation? The self-employed check asks the same questions Joshua would and shows the working.
Run the self-employed check