This page is for Australians who currently have a bad credit file and need a home loan.

What Is Considered To Be ‘Bad Credit’?

Have you missed a payment on your bill, credit card, mortgage or any other type of debt in the past?

Credit providers like lenders take note of any missed payments on your credit file, but that need not mean the end of your home loan dreams. The following is what lenders consider bad credit:

  • Bad credit history: Adverse listings like defaults, bankruptcy, judgements, court writs, or excessive credit enquiries can raise concerns, but they don’t automatically exclude you from getting a home loan.
  • Lender credit history: While your past credit history with a lender may be considered, a bad history does not necessarily mean you’re ineligible for a home loan.
  • Unpaid bills or taxes: Outstanding bills like council rates or tax bills may be considered but can be explained and resolved.
  • Mortgage arrears: Lenders may be cautious if you’ve missed any payments on your mortgage in the last six months.
  • Company in financial trouble: If you’re a director of a company experiencing financial difficulty, it doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on your personal credit history.
  • Overcommitted: While having too many debts or a negative net worth may be concerning, options are still available to help you secure a home loan.

How Do I Get Approved For A Bad-Credit Home Loan?

Applying with the right lender is crucial to getting approved for a home loan with bad credit. While major banks and lenders may be strict with their lending policies, there are non-conforming and specialist lenders who take a more flexible approach.

We have a team of dedicated bad-credit mortgage brokers with many years of experience.

Many of our senior brokers have worked in the credit departments of major banks so they know exactly how to build a strong case for bad-credit home loans.

Call us on 1300 889 743 or complete our free online assessment form and find out how we can help you get approved for a bad-credit mortgage.

What Are Bad Credit Home Loans?

In Australia, bad credit mortgages are types of mortgages offered by non-conforming or specialist lenders.

Bad credit home loans consider all situations, especially the ones where borrowers have blemishes on their credit file.

They are designed to separate and help the ‘outside of the box’ applications that don’t meet the bank’s guidelines.

What Are The Types Of Bad-Credit Home Loans?

These types of bad credit home loans are offered to borrowers who have defaults on their credit file. In Australia there are generally two types of defaults lenders will look at:

  • Paid defaults: Defaults that you’ve paid in full.
  • Unpaid defaults: Defaults that you haven’t paid in full.

A default is a record on your credit file that shows that you have an overdue account such as a personal loan, credit card bill, utility bill or phone bill.

It’s classed as being overdue if the payment is 60 days late or if the lender has been unable to contact you.

Having a default on your credit file will likely get you declined with most major banks as this is a sign of your inability to pay your debts.

For more information about this type of bad credit home loan, please see our home loan with defaults page or complete our free assessment form.

 

Discharged Bankruptcy Home Loan

These types of bad credit home loans are offered to borrowers who were bankrupt and are now discharged.
There are lenders in Australia that will lend you money to buy a property the day after you become discharged bankrupt!

The term ‘discharged’ is purely an automatic process of the law which releases the bankrupt person from bankruptcy.

Once you are discharged, you are no longer bankrupt and no longer required to have limited assets and no overseas travel.

It also means that you’re able to apply for credit again.

For more information about this type of bad credit home loan, please see our page or complete our free assessment form.

 

Part IX Debt Agreement

These types of bad credit home loans are offered to borrowers who entered a Part IX Agreement and have completed the agreement.
In Australia, if you can’t pay your debts, you have the option of seeing a debt agreement administrator who can help you prepare a debt agreement between you and your creditors or lenders.

Once the debt agreement is fulfilled, you’ll be discharged from the agreement.

A Part 9 will remain on your credit file for up to seven years.

There are lenders who will consider your mortgage application if you have a completed Part IX Agreements on a credit file.

For more information about this type of bad credit home loan, please see our page or complete our free assessment form.

 

Tax Debt Home Loan

These types of bad credit home loans are offered to borrowers who have a large debt with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Generally, the ATO debt is added to the mortgage, leaving the borrower clear from any ATO debt.

ATO debt is actually very common.

It can be easy to make a mistake on your tax return and this can come back to bite you years later.

For more information about this type of bad credit home loan, please see our tax debt mortgage page or complete our free assessment form.

 

Debt Consolidation Home Loan

These types of bad credit home loans are offered to borrowers who have a number of small debts that have become unmanageable.

In Australia, most people choose to roll multiple forms of unsecured debt such as personal loans, credit cards and car loans, into their mortgage, creating one simple, lower monthly repayment.

For more information about this type of bad credit home loan, please see our page or complete our free assessment form.

Why Should I Get A Bad Credit Home Loan?

Bad-credit home loans are created to allow you to rebuild your score and secure a better future. Here are a few reasons you might want to choose a bad-credit home loan:

  • Your application is not automatically declined based on your credit history. The mortgage broker or lender will look closely at your circumstances and review your application based on merit.
  • You have set your eyes on a property and don’t want to lose the opportunity while waiting for your credit score to improve.
  • It helps to build credit. Once you have a proven track record of repayments on your mortgage with no arrears, you can refinance to a better interest rate.
  • It gives you breathing room to repay your bad debts and clean up your credit file.

The interest rates on bad-credit home loans are higher than average to compensate for the lending risk. At Home Loan Experts, we understand a bad-credit home loan is a short- to medium-term fix. We always set up bad-credit home loans with the intent of refinancing to a new lender in a few years, when your credit history is clear.

How Much Can I Borrow If I Have Bad Credit?

You may qualify for a bad credit home loan if you have the following on your credit file:

  • Small paid default: If you have a small default for less than $500 and it has been paid more than six months ago, we can help you borrow up to 90% or up to 95% LVR (of the property value) in strong cases.
  • More than one small paid default: If you have less than $1,000 in paid defaults from financial institutions (e.g. banks), and less than $500 in paid defaults from non-financial institutions (e.g. phone companies), then you can borrow up to 85% or possibly 90% of the property value.
  • Moderate paid defaults: If you have up to $3,000 in paid defaults, we’re able to help you borrow up to 80% of the property value with a prime lender, up to 90% of the property value with a specialist lender or up to 100% of the property value if you have a security guarantee from your parents.
  • Large paid defaults: Larger paid defaults from $3,000 to $500,000 can be considered on a case by case basis if you have a very good explanation backed by strong evidence. We can lend up to 90% of the property value with a specialist lender.
  • Unpaid defaults: If you have any unpaid defaults then you can only borrow up to 90% of the property value with a non-conforming lender. Many lenders require you to pay the defaults before the loan is approved.
  • Judgments or court writs: If you have any judgments or court writs then you can borrow up to 90% of the property value with a non-conforming lender.
  • Part IX agreement: Please refer to our Part IX agreement page for more information.
  • Bankruptcy: Please refer to our bankruptcy mortgages page for more information.

If you have any questions, feel free to call us on 1300 889 743 complete our free online assessment form or leave a question in the comments section below.

How Do I Qualify For A Bad Credit Home Loan?

If you have a blemish on your credit file, there are a few things you can do to qualify for a home loan, even with a major bank or lender.

Above all, speaking with a specialist mortgage broker is the key to building a strong case to show that the debt problems you’ve had in the past are just that: in the past.

A credit expert understands exactly what the banks want to see when assessing a borrowers’ ability to pay back bad credit home loans.

Avoid Getting More Negative Listings

Are you currently experiencing financial hardship?

You can’t change the past but what you can do is prevent further bad credit listings.

This will put you in a better position with specialist lenders that offer bad credit home loans.

Ultimately, they want to see that you’re making, or you’ve made, a good effort to fix your past financial problems and you’re in a better position.

You can demonstrate this by:

  • Making your repayments on time.
  • Keeping in contact with lenders to avoid a “clearout” being listed.
  • Paying something, not nothing, on your debts.
  • Pay off your existing defaults.

Find out more tips on the My Credit File page or seek out financial counselling if you’re currently experiencing hardship.

Wait For Listings To Clear

If you’ve missed payments or you’ve defaulted in the past, you may want to wait for your credit to clear before applying.

Bear in mind, this may not always be in your best interests!

Buying a home sooner rather than waiting can potentially put you in a better position in the long run when you factor in property equity.

Other times, bad credit home loans may be the only option available to you depending on the damage to your credit file.

However, if for instance, you’ve had a default, court writ or enquiry listed on your profile for the past 5 years, and you’re less than 1 month away from it being cleared, our brokers may advise you to come back when the listing has cleared.

We can’t provide you with financial advice so you may want to seek out credit repair services such as Credit Repair Australia.

In this way, with all other aspects of your situation being strong, you can qualify with a major lender at a much sharper rate.

FAQs About Bad Credit Home Loans

Specialist lenders, also known as non-conforming lenders, are far more flexible than major banks. These lenders recognise that people with bad credit are looking for a second chance at a happy life.

Here’s a list of the top five lenders specialising in bad credit home loans.

Besides them, the non-conforming lenders that we deal with are:

If you currently have a bad-credit home loan, you can refinance from a non-conforming lender when:

  • You owe 80% or less of your property’s value
  • Your defaults are no longer showing on your credit file
  • You’ve paid off your defaults
  • You have full income evidence
  • You’ve made all of your repayments on time in the last six months.

For more information, read our page on how to refinance a bad-credit home loan.

Your name, date of birth, current address, previous address, drivers licence number, employer and previous employer are information stored on your credit file.

All the loans that you have applied for in the last 5 years are a part of your credit file and they come up as “Enquiries”.

Other aspects such as court judgments, court writs and bankruptcy history are saved on your credit file, to find out more read our credit file page.

Many Australians who fall into bad credit aren’t actually irresponsible or “bad people”.

Most of them have simply been involved in an unfortunate life event like divorce, loss of job, injury or business failure that has resulted in blemishes on their credit file.

People that fall into bad credit aren’t necessarily living in outer fringe suburbs either.

It’s well-known among economists that affluent suburbs are actually the most susceptible to financial stress when interest rates rise.

That’s because their mortgages tend to be much larger and they’re more highly-leveraged. That means their Loan to Value Ratios (LVRs) are higher.

Add to that the fact that wages haven’t really matched the growth in house prices and it’s easy to see how anyone can become “overexposed” and fall into a bad credit situation.

The worst part is that if you’ve missed just a couple of debt payments but have since been managing your financials positively, these listings still show up on your credit file sometimes years after you made the mistake.

The Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) regime announced in 2014 can potentially help you mitigate the negative aspects of your credit file.

However, it can also mean that if you have a clear credit history but a poor repayment history you could be knocked back for a home loan.

Information like your repayment history isn’t being provided by all Australian lenders as yet but it will be something to look out for soon.

Before officially getting a blemish recorded on your credit file, there can be a definite lead up of events that can eventually result in defaults or worse.

The Household Expenditure Survey from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found that the most common financial stress experiences included:

  • Being unable to raise $2000 in a week for something important.
  • Spending more money than received.
  • Being unable to pay utility bills like gas, electricity or telephone on time.
  • Being unable to pay registration or insurance on time.
  • Pawning or sold something to make ends meet.
  • Going without meals.
  • Seeking assistance from welfare/community organisations.
  • Seeking financial help from friends or family.

These financial stress indicators were most common with younger households, with 70% of respondents declaring that they had experienced at least one of the above scenarios in a 12-month period.

If you’re experiencing financial stress, you can always seek free financial counselling from the National Debt Helpline by calling 1800 007 007.

It’s essential that you get your financials in check first before committing to a home loan.

Australians with bad credit can be declined for a home loan by major banks or lenders for a number of reasons.

It could be because of the type of bad credit you have or the size of your defaults but, generally speaking, simply having blemishes on your credit file can stop you from borrowing.

The reason is that it shows to the bank that you may be unreliable as a mortgage owner.

However, there are lenders that specialise in bad credit home loans and take a more common sense approach when assessing your situation.

Confused? Speak to us!

We have a team of dedicated bad credit mortgage brokers with many years of experience.

Many of our senior brokers have worked in the credit departments of major banks so they know exactly how to build a strong case for bad credit home loans.

Call us on 1300 889 743 or complete our free online assessment form and find out how we can help you get approved for a bad credit mortgage.