Know the system before you start making offers.
This page is for anyone buying here for the first time, whether you’ve just arrived in Australia or simply have never used the Australian home-loan system before. It focuses on the four things that most often catch first-time buyers out: what “deposit” actually means, how residency affects lender access, how a gifted or overseas deposit is treated, and what income evidence looks like if your work history sits outside Australia.
Deposit & genuine savings, these are not the same thing
Four different concepts get flattened into the word “deposit,” and mixing them up is one of the most common sources of confusion for first-time buyers:
- Your deposit, the actual cash you’re contributing toward the purchase, from any source
- A government scheme’s minimum deposit, the minimum deposit percentage a scheme like the Australian Government’s 5% Deposit Scheme requires you to hold, which is a scheme rule, not a bank policy
- Genuine savings, a separate lender requirement about the source and history of part of your deposit, most relevant at higher LVRs
- A gifted deposit, funds given to you, which some lender policies treat differently from money you’ve saved yourself
Genuine savings is a lender requirement, not a single rule applied identically by every bank. Across lenders, genuine-savings requirements become particularly relevant at higher LVRs, many policies use a concept of roughly 5% of the purchase price needing to be held/accumulated over a period (commonly around three months, though this varies), while other policies are considerably more flexible about source, particularly where a first-home government scheme is involved. What counts as acceptable evidence, and the exact history period required, differs by lender.
Do not confuse this with the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme. The scheme’s own deposit requirement and your participating lender’s separate credit/genuine-savings policy are two different tests, and both need to be checked, meeting one doesn’t automatically satisfy the other. See the current official scheme rules at Housing Australia, First Home Guarantee.
| LVR band | How genuine savings typically factors in |
|---|---|
| Up to ~80% | Often less central to the decision, subject to product and lender |
| ~80–90% | Can become materially more important depending on lender policy |
| ~90–95% | Genuine savings, LMI and any government scheme eligibility can all interact |
Residency & lender availability
Citizenship, permanent residency, and specific visa subclasses can all change which lenders will consider your application at all, what deposit is required, and whether a foreign-purchaser duty surcharge applies in your state or territory. This is genuinely lender-specific and visa-specific, a blanket answer isn’t reliable here. If residency is a live question for your situation, it’s worth raising directly rather than assuming either way.
Gifted deposit from family
Gifted deposits, including funds transferred from overseas, are common. Most lenders want a signed gift letter, clarity on the giver’s relationship to you, confirmation they have no ongoing interest in the property, and a clean paper trail of the funds arriving in your account. See gifted deposit from family: what should you prepare? for the full evidence list, including how this interacts with genuine-savings policy above.
Employment & income evidence
How long you’ve been employed in Australia, whether your role is permanent, and how any overseas income or employment history is treated can all vary between lenders. Some policies will use overseas employment history to support continuity of employment; others assess only the Australian portion. If you’ve recently arrived, a short local employment history combined with a longer overseas track record in the same field is a genuinely different scenario from a short history with no prior context, worth explaining clearly rather than leaving a lender to guess.
Pre-approval
A useful early step once your deposit position and documents are in order, it gives budget confidence and an early read on policy fit, but it is conditional, time-limited, and not the same as final unconditional approval. See what pre-approval does and doesn’t mean before you start making offers based on it.
Government support
Government schemes can include citizenship, residency, property, income and owner-occupier requirements. Use Government Support to open the current official eligibility information for the relevant scheme and state or territory. Add a government amount to Funds Position only after it has been confirmed.