Written and reviewed by John Pierre Saliba, Director and Senior Finance Broker, MFAA Accredited, ACL 511092. Last reviewed 8 October 2026.
Doctors in Australia can typically borrow up to 95% of a property's value with lenders mortgage insurance waived, subject to lender assessment and current AHPRA registration. Many lenders apply no minimum income for medical practitioners, and the policy reaches further down the career ladder than most doctors expect: interns and residents are often eligible from their first employment contract. This hub explains the whole medico lending landscape in 2026 and links to a dedicated page for every profession we arrange loans for.
All figures are general guides only, subject to individual lender assessment and your personal circumstances.
Do Doctors Pay LMI in Australia in 2026?
Usually not, provided the loan is structured under the right policy. LMI normally applies to any loan above 80% LVR and protects the lender, not you. For medical practitioners, many lenders waive it entirely at up to 90% LVR, and some at up to 95%, because decades of lending data show doctors are among the lowest-risk borrowers in the country. The premium being waived is not trivial: on large loans at high LVR it is commonly estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars. Check what it would cost on your numbers with our LMI calculator.
Two things the waiver does not do: it does not relax serviceability (your income must still support the repayments under assessment buffers) and it does not standardise anything across the market. Each lender keeps its own profession list, LVR tiers, income minimums and property rules. The landscape, not any single policy, is what this page maps.
Which Medical Professions Qualify for an LMI Waiver?
Across the lenders we work with, the professional waiver landscape in 2026 broadly sorts into three tiers. Lists differ lender to lender, so treat this as a map, not a promise:
Tier 1: widest access, typically up to 95% LVR, no LMI
- GPs and general practitioners, hospital doctors and medical specialists
- Dentists and dental specialists
- Veterinarians at many lenders
- Optometrists at many lenders
Tier 2: commonly up to 90% LVR, no LMI, at a smaller set of lenders
- Physiotherapists
- Chiropractors
- Pharmacists, midwives and several other registered professions, lender-dependent
Tier 3: concessions rather than full waivers
- Nurses and allied health workers: typically 85% to 90% LVR concessions and generous treatment of shift income, rather than the full 95% waiver
Not sure where you land? Our healthcare eligibility page walks the tiers profession by profession, and the professional loans guide covers lawyers, accountants and executives on parallel policies.
How Much Can a Doctor Borrow in 2026?
Serviceability, not the waiver, sets the ceiling. As a working guide, most doctors can borrow roughly 5.5 to 6.5 times gross income, subject to assessment, with existing debts, HECS and living expenses pulling the figure down. An intern on $80,000 supports a very different loan from a consultant on $450,000, even though both may hold the same waiver. Estimate yours with the borrowing power calculator.
Where medico lending gets genuinely technical is income recognition. The difference between lenders on these items is frequently worth six figures of borrowing power:
- Overtime and on-call loadings. Some lenders assess 100% of regular overtime for medical staff; others shade it to 80% or want two years of history.
- Salary packaging. Public hospital packaging can be grossed up by some lenders and ignored by others.
- Private billings and ABN income. VMO sessions, private assisting and telehealth income are assessed anywhere from three months of remittances to two full tax returns.
- Multiple employers. Common for registrars and anaesthetists; some lenders aggregate cleanly, others penalise casual contracts.
90% vs 95% LVR: How the Tiers Actually Work
The 90% no-LMI tier is broad, often has no income minimum, and usually extends to investment property. The 95% tier is narrower: fewer lenders, more frequent income minimums (commonly $90,000 to $150,000), and sometimes owner-occupied only. Pricing can also differ between tiers. The right answer depends on your deposit, timeline and whether the property is a home or an investment; we model both paths side by side before recommending one, as our Best Interests Duty requires.
Worked Example: $1.5M Purchase at 95% LVR
Illustrative only, excluding stamp duty and costs:
- Without the waiver. To avoid LMI you need 20% down: $300,000. At 95% LVR with LMI, the deposit falls to $75,000 but the premium on a $1,425,000 loan is commonly estimated around $50,000 to $60,000, usually capitalised and accruing interest for the life of the loan.
- With the medico waiver at 95%. Deposit $75,000, loan $1,425,000, LMI $0. Estimated saving roughly $50,000 to $60,000 up front, plus the long-run interest on that premium.
All figures are estimates for illustration; actual premiums vary by lender, loan size and LVR. The same arithmetic scales down for smaller purchases and up for larger ones, which is why we price the waiver against your actual target property rather than quoting a generic saving.
Interns, Residents and Registrars: Do Junior Doctors Qualify?
Usually, yes. Many lenders accept junior doctors under medico policy from the moment AHPRA registration and a hospital employment contract exist, in some cases before the first payslip. The waiver is identical; only the loan size differs because it is tied to actual salary. For registrars moving states for training rotations, we also manage the practical wrinkles: probation periods, fixed-term contracts and income that steps up each training year. Several lenders will consider the next year's contracted salary when it is documented.
What Else Do Doctors Get Beyond the LMI Waiver?
The waiver is the headline, but medico policy usually travels with a wider set of concessions, each worth asking for explicitly:
- Pricing. Many lenders reserve their sharpest advertised discounts for medico borrowers, and loans above roughly $1M routinely attract individually negotiated pricing on top.
- Higher exposure limits. Some lenders allow doctors larger total lending across multiple properties before policy caps bite, which matters for portfolio builders.
- Income flexibility. The same credit teams that run medico policy tend to assess overtime, on-call and private billings more generously, because they see those income shapes daily.
- Faster handling. Several lenders route medico applications to specialist assessment queues. It is not a formal service guarantee, but in practice the files move quicker.
None of these are automatic. They are policy levers a broker pulls deliberately, lender by lender, and they compound: a waiver plus negotiated pricing plus full overtime recognition is a very different loan from the branch-standard version of the same application.
How We Run a Doctor Loan, Start to Finish
The process we run for medical borrowers, so you know what you are signing up for:
- 1. Fifteen-minute call. Registration, income shape, deposit, target price. You leave knowing your waiver tier and realistic budget.
- 2. Written eligibility check. We confirm the waiver with the shortlisted lender in writing before you spend a dollar on the purchase.
- 3. Pre-approval. Typically 2 to 5 business days once documents are in. You bid or make offers with finance confidence.
- 4. Formal approval and settlement. We manage valuation, approval conditions and settlement bookings, and we chase the parties so you do not have to between patients.
You pay us nothing at any step; the lender pays on settlement, and the Best Interests Duty binds every recommendation along the way.
A practical note for junior doctors weighing up whether to buy during training: the waiver does not expire. If your deposit or income is not quite there this year, nothing is lost by waiting a rotation or two, and a 15-minute call now can set the savings target so the purchase lands the month you are ready rather than six months after.
Self-Employed Doctors and Private Practice
Consultants billing through companies and trusts, practice owners and VMOs remain eligible for the waiver at many lenders; what changes is income verification. Most lenders want two years of financials, some accept one, and add-backs (depreciation, one-off costs, voluntary super) can often be restored to assessable income when the file is presented properly. The detail lives on our specialists page and self-employed lending page.
Book a free 15-minute call with John Pierre Saliba
Fifteen minutes with John is usually enough to confirm which waiver tier you fit, what deposit you need and what you could borrow. Free, no obligation, and nothing is lodged without your say-so.
Find Your Specialty Page
Each profession has its own policy quirks, so we keep a dedicated page for each: GPs and general practitioners · medical specialists and consultants · dentists · veterinarians · optometrists · physiotherapists · chiropractors · nurses and allied health · healthcare eligibility overview. For questions, contact us any time.
