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Ready for a number? Try our borrowing power calculator, read about the 2026 lending rules, or book a chat and we’ll show you how lenders are likely to see your application.
What's Eating Your Borrowing Power?
See roughly how much home loan your debts and spending could be costing you.
Other calculators:
Borrowing Power
Borrowing Power Impact
Loan Repayments
Amortisation
Interest Only
Offset
Extra Repayments
Lump Sum
Savings Goal
Loan Comparison
Stamp Duty
This is a rough guide only. Every lender treats debts, income and living expenses differently, so your real borrowing power depends on the lender and your situation. For a real number, book a chat with us.
Pop in your household and debts and see roughly how much home loan each one could be costing you. We've filled in example figures, so swap in your own.
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Living expenses are everyday household spending: groceries, bills, insurance, transport, school fees, fun. Leave out rent, mortgage and the debts below.
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Your debts and spending could be costing you around
$0
in borrowing power
How we worked this out
First up: no calculator can give you an exact number without seeing your documents. This one gives you a rough idea of how your debts and living costs affect what you could borrow. It's pretty good as at October 2026, but banks change their rules all the time, and any change can shift these results.
Our clients often ask us to run "what ifs": drop a card limit, close a card, cut spending by $500 a month, pay off the car. They want to see what it does to their home loan. So we built this for you to play with yourself.
Here's how it works. Each debt is turned into a monthly repayment, then into the home loan that repayment could otherwise support over 30 years at your interest rate plus the 3% buffer lenders currently test at. The default rate is the RBA cash rate plus 1.8%, our estimate of the gap to the middle variable rate across our panel, which we review whenever lenders reprice. Most lenders assess credit cards at 3.8% of the limit per month, even if you pay them off in full. Living expenses are compared with a typical lender benchmark for your household size and income (the middle figure across 17 lenders on our panel), and lenders use whichever is higher. HECS/HELP uses the ATO's 2026-27 compulsory repayment rates, based on gross salary. If you salary sacrifice into super or have negatively geared property, your real HELP repayment can be higher.
This shows the effect on what your income can support. Lenders also cap total debt at a multiple of income and have their own policies, which can limit how much of this you'd actually get. It also doesn't cover existing home loans, rental income or investment property. Talk to us for those.
Paying off a debt can lift your borrowing power, but if the money comes out of your deposit savings you might end up worse off. It's worth checking which option leaves you ahead.