Borrowing Capacity in 2027: How Much Can You Get on $90k in Australia?

$90,000 is a solid full-time salary in Australia. But if you walk into a major bank (like CommBank or Westpac) asking for a home loan, you might be shocked by how little that $90k actually gets you in the current property market.

The days of borrowing 6 or 7 times your income are long gone. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has completely rewritten the rulebook on how much banks can lend you to protect the economy from defaulting mortgages.

The APRA 3% Buffer: Your Biggest Hurdle

The single most important factor determining your borrowing capacity is the APRA serviceability buffer.

Here is how it works: If a bank is offering you a home loan at an interest rate of 5.5%, APRA expects lenders to add a buffer of at least 3.0% when assessing your application. They must prove that you could still afford your mortgage if the interest rate jumped to 8.5%.

The Math: Borrowing on $90,000

Let’s look at a single applicant earning $90,000 a year (Gross). After income tax and the Medicare levy, actual take-home pay is roughly $5,800 a month.

Using standard Household Expenditure Measure (HEM) benchmark living expenses, here is what borrowing capacity could look like under different scenarios. These are illustrative ranges — every lender assesses expenses, buffer rates, and liabilities differently:

Notice how drastically debt destroys your buying power. Banks assess credit cards based on the limit, not the balance. If you have a $10,000 credit card limit but owe absolutely nothing, the bank still pretends you maxed it out and are making monthly payments on it. Cancel unused credit cards before applying for a mortgage.

The HECS-HELP Debt Penalty

Many Australians don’t consider HECS a "real" debt because the government collects it automatically through the tax system. But banks absolutely treat the compulsory repayment as a real liability.

Since 1 July 2025, HELP repayments use a marginal system: no repayment below the minimum threshold (currently around $67,000 of repayment income), then 15 cents per dollar over $67,000 up to $125,000, with further bands above that. At a $90,000 income, that works out to roughly $3,450 a year (about $288 a month) — and the bank deducts that from your assessed borrowing power. If you are close to paying off your HECS debt (e.g., you only owe $3,000), paying it off in full before applying can increase your assessed borrowing capacity.