Nurse home loans

If you are an enrolled nurse, AIN, student, or personal carer, the high-tier waiver most people mean is usually not your door. Stay for the scheme and deposit chapters, or go to No or low deposit and First home guarantee.

Who is in / who is out

In, for the $90k / 90% Westpac-group line: registered nurse, registered midwife. Income floor $90,000 — joint if both applicants are eligible healthcare professionals (Westpac media 18 Mar 2024). Minimum 10% deposit. LMI waived on that product line. Verified 28 Aug 2026 on Westpac’s public healthcare-LMI page.

Not on that line: enrolled nurse, AIN, student, carer. Not 95% LVR — that is the doctor / dentist tier.

AHPRA registration is the gate. Job title on a roster is not.

Registration is what the policy tests, not the job title on a payslip. Westpac Group names registered nurses and midwives together in Medico Group B, so a midwife is assessed on the same terms as a registered nurse. Current AHPRA registration is the document a lender asks for.

Where a nurse works does not decide the waiver; how the income is evidenced does. A public hospital nurse and an agency nurse holding the same registration meet the same policy test, but agency income is irregular by nature and how much of it counts is a lender-by-lender question Money Brain has not published.

AHPRA registration in Australia is what a waiver policy tests, not where the qualification was earned. Residency is assessed separately and is the more common obstacle. Money Brain has not published which lenders restrict temporary visa holders, because no policy document has been read for that question yet.

There is no single checklist, because the two lenders set different tests. Westpac Group wants registration in the registered division, $90,000 combined income from the qualification, and principal and interest. Bank First wants a healthcare worker buying a first home, with the loan at or under $800,000. Both want at least 10% plus costs and clean credit conduct.

A waiver can still apply where one applicant holds the qualifying registration. Westpac Group's Medico Group B floor of $90,000 is a combined figure, so a nurse buying with a non-nurse partner is not disadvantaged by the partner's occupation, provided the qualifying income clears the floor.

Bank First's healthcare waiver is first home buyers only, so it cannot be used for an investment purchase. Westpac Group's Medico Group B is principal and interest. The investment question changes which lender fits and sometimes removes the waiver altogether, so it is asked early rather than late.

Why a nurse's application gets declined: the common reasons are not about nursing. Credit conduct on a buy-now-pay-later account, an undisclosed HECS-HELP balance, agency income with too short a history, and a probation period at a lender that will not accept one. Each is worth checking before an application is lodged, because a decline is recorded.

What they read on the file

Hospital nurses often sit on a state EA, not only the national award. Base on the PDF can sit under $90,000. The same person on nights and Sundays often clears it. Victorian loadings are sometimes flat dollars per shift — a lender who only reads percentages will mis-read that payslip.

Bring 3–6 months of payslips, not the award table.

Salary packaging on a public or NFP hospital has an ATO cap. It changes take-home. It does not replace the income the lender assesses.

A penalty attached to a permanent roster recurs every cycle; overtime does not, and the two are assessed as different kinds of income. Which lender discounts which, and by how much, is work Money Brain has not finished. This page will name the lenders and the thresholds when it has, rather than before.

Overtime is evidenced rather than argued: a consistent history across payslips and a year-to-date figure that supports it. How far each lender discounts it varies, and Money Brain has not yet published a lender-by-lender position on overtime for nursing, so none is asserted here.

Second-employer income is assessed on its own record rather than added straight to the primary role, and agency work is the least predictable of the three. How much continuity each lender wants before counting it is part of the same unfinished work, so no figure is given here.

A new graduate nurse is not automatically excluded, and lenders differ on whether a probation period stops an application. Money Brain checks the probation position at each lender against its current policy rather than publishing one here, because it is the kind of rule that changes without announcement.

Part-time hours are assessed on the contracted hours rather than on a full-time equivalent, which is why a part-time nurse is sometimes quoted a lower figure than expected. A nurse on parental leave usually needs a letter from the employer confirming the return date and the hours.

A HECS-HELP balance reduces borrowing power because the compulsory repayment is a commitment a lender must count, and the repayment rises with income. The size of the effect depends on the balance and the income, and Money Brain works it out on the real numbers rather than publishing one figure.

Westpac, in one block

Registered nurse or midwife. $90,000 a year. 90% LVR. 10% deposit. LMI waived. Westpac public page, checked 28 August 2026. St.George publishes the same list. Bank of Melbourne and BankSA sit on the standing record pending e1.

Casual averaging is published as both 48 and 52 weeks on public scrapes.

Westpac does not list enrolled nurses on this waiver. It does not claim 95% for registered nurses.

If the waiver is not the door

First home guarantee (5% deposit scheme from 1 Oct 2025) and Help to Buy are separate URLs. A guarantor is a family decision, not a nurse product. Those pages own the rule. This page only says: an enrolled nurse who is out of the waiver is often still in a scheme.

A nurse using the Westpac Group waiver needs 10% of the property value plus the purchase costs, because the waiver removes the mortgage insurance premium and nothing else. Stamp duty, legal fees, the building inspection and lender fees still have to be paid in cash, and those are the costs people underestimate.

The 5% Deposit Scheme: needs at least 5% and under 20% saved, first home buyers only, with a purchase price cap set by state and by region. A family guarantor: needs a relative willing to secure part of the loan against their own property. You remain liable for the whole debt.

First home owner grants and stamp duty concessions are set by each state, and a nurse gets no separate nursing entitlement within them. Money Brain checks each state against its own revenue office before quoting a figure.

A declined application is recorded on your credit file and makes the next one harder, which is why the checking happens before submission. For a nurse the common version is applying to Commonwealth Bank, NAB or Bankwest, each of which excluded nurses by name in the policy documents Money Brain read on 2026-08-09.

• No or low deposit
• First home guarantee
• Help to Buy
• Guarantor
• LMI waiver
• All the schemes
• First home buyer grants

How much can a nurse borrow

The number is not on this page. How much can I borrow owns it. What belongs here: a new-grad RN on weekday base only often sits under the Westpac floor; the same RN on a mixed roster often sits over it. That is why the payslips matter.