Declined by the bank they had used for eleven years, a couple in Concord were approved by another lender. This worked example shows why.
Find out why. A servicing decline means that lender’s calculator, at its test rate and living cost benchmark, did not fit the loan; another lender’s may.
Apply once, to a lender chosen for how it reads your income and debts, rather than re-applying widely and adding enquiries.
Part of the complex lending guide.
Two good incomes and a solid deposit, declined by the bank they had banked with for years.
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I honestly couldn’t recommend Links Property Finance and Charles highly enough. After speaking with others who weren’t able to help me, Charles went above and beyond to understand my situation…
Charles at Links Property Finance made buying our first home so much easier than we expected. As first home buyers, we had a lot of questions around borrowing capacity, our deposit and the different government schemes available to us. Charles explained everything clearly, compared different lenders and kept us updated throughout the whole process. He was always easy to reach and made sure we understood what was happening from pre approval right through to getting our home loan approved. We would definitely recommend Links Property Finance to anyone looking for a mortgage broker, especially first home buyers who want someone to guide them through the process.
I found Charles and Links Property Finance very prompt and professional to deal with. Made it all so easy.
Charles Touma, Mortgage Broker.
Three things were suppressing the number, and none of them were the couple's fault. The bonus was being counted at a heavily discounted rate by that lender's policy where others count a two-year average far more generously.
The credit card limits, not balances, were being assessed as though fully drawn, a standard approach, but the unused headroom was costing real borrowing power.
And the lender's assessment buffer and living-expense floor sat at the conservative end of the range. Change the lender and you change all three inputs at once, which is why the same household can get very different numbers from different institutions.
Which lenders read bonus income at close to full value with two years of evidence. What closing or reducing the card limits does to capacity, modelled before anything is cancelled. Whether paying the car loan out is worth the deposit reduction, arithmetic, not a rule.
And critically, the order of applications, because every application leaves an enquiry on the credit file and a cluster of enquiries reads badly to the next assessor.
A decline is not a black mark, but a pattern of them is. Credit files record enquiries, and an assessor looking at four applications in six weeks reads a borrower shopping desperately rather than shopping carefully. That is the real cost of reapplying blind.
There is also a timing reality: with a contract already exchanged and finance conditions running, the second application has to be right the first time, which means the policy match is done before lodgement rather than discovered afterwards.
Where a genuine credit event sits behind the decline, our credit history guide covers the different path that opens up.
Your bank is one lender with one calculator, not a referendum on whether you can buy. Before you reduce your price range, get the file read against a different written policy, and get it read before you apply again rather than after.
And ask for the actual decline reason: a servicing decline and a policy decline look identical in a rejection letter, and they have completely different solutions.
Not on its own: the enquiry sits on your credit file, but a single decline is not a verdict. What matters is not repeating it, so the next application goes to a lender whose written policy fits your situation.
Banks assess at their own rates, buffers and income rules, and the same file can pass comfortably at one and fail at another. A decline usually means the policy did not fit, not that the loan was unaffordable.
Understand the stated reason, fix what is fixable, and match the file to a lender whose policy reads it differently. Applying broadly and hoping is the one approach that reliably makes things worse.
Thirty minutes with Charles: what the decline meant, what your file looks like to a different lender, and whether the number changes.
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This is an illustrative example scenario, not a description of a specific client and not a testimonial. The figures are realistic but rounded, no lender is named, and no outcome is promised, every application is assessed on its own facts. General information only, not credit or financial advice.
