A registrar, a 10% deposit, and no LMI
A hospital registrar in Randwick had the income to service a $1.1 million purchase comfortably and a deposit of about ten per cent, most of it saved during training years. On a standard assessment that gap means lender's mortgage insurance, tens of thousands added to the loan. For eligible medical professionals, many lenders waive it entirely.
The situation
A registrar three years into specialty training, on a base salary with regular overtime and on-call allowances, AHPRA registered, no HECS remaining and a clean credit file. Buying an apartment near the hospital precinct, intending to hold it long term.
The problem
The deposit was real but not twenty per cent, and the shortfall arrived at exactly the moment prices in the precinct were moving. Paying insurance to cover the gap was affordable but expensive, and waiting to save the difference meant watching the market do what the market does.
What made it difficult
Professional waiver policies are genuinely valuable and genuinely fiddly. Which professions qualify differs by lender, and registrars, VMOs, GPs and dentists are not treated identically everywhere. The maximum loan-to-value ratio for the waiver varies, commonly up to around ninety to ninety-five per cent. And the income itself is layered: base, overtime, on-call allowances and sometimes private billings, each discounted at a different rate depending on the lender. Our doctors guide and LMI waiver guide cover how the lines are drawn.
What a broker assesses
Whether the registration and role actually sit inside the current eligibility list at each candidate lender, confirmed against written policy rather than assumed from last year's. How much of the overtime and allowance income counts, because on hospital rosters that treatment moves borrowing power substantially. The apartment itself, size, building and any lender concentration limits in the block. And the honest comparison: waiver at one lender's rate, against a cheaper rate elsewhere with insurance paid, over the period the loan is realistically held.
Illustrative sequence, the order and availability depend on the actual file and lender policy at the time.
The lending considerations
A waiver is not automatically the cheapest outcome. It removes an upfront cost, but the lenders offering it are not always the lenders offering the sharpest pricing, and over a long hold the rate can matter more than the insurance did. That comparison should be run in dollars before anyone commits. Eligibility also moves: lists are updated, thresholds change, and a policy that applied to a colleague two years ago may not apply now. Nothing here is a promise that any particular lender will approve any particular file.
What borrowers can take from this
If you are in an eligible profession, find out before you save toward twenty per cent, because the waiver may mean you never needed to. And have your income read by someone who understands rostered work: on hospital pay, the difference between a lender that counts your allowances properly and one that discounts them heavily can be larger than the insurance saving itself.
Related guides
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.
Your profession may already be the deposit.
Twenty minutes with Charles: whether the waiver policies apply to your registration, how your rostered income reads, and what it is worth against paying insurance.
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