Links Property Finance · Worked example from a Sydney mortgage broker: A Doctor Buying at 90% Without Mortgage Insurance

Professional waiver policies are valuable and 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.

Whether the registration and role 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 fair comparison: waiver at one lender's rate, against a cheaper rate elsewhere with insurance paid, over the period the loan is realistically held.

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.

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.