Something interesting is happening in home lending at the moment.
Mortgage brokers are writing more Australian home loans than ever before. At the same time, non-bank and specialist lenders are taking a much bigger share of the market.
The latest figures show mortgage brokers facilitated a record 81.6% of new residential home loans in the June 2026 quarter, up from 77.6% a year earlier and 73.7% two years ago.
Non-bank lending is growing even faster. New residential lending by non-bank lenders increased 65.2% over the year to June 2026, with non-banks accounting for 10.7% of new home lending by value, compared with 4.8% when the current ABS series began in 2019.
They’re two different measures, so I wouldn’t suggest that one is necessarily causing the other. But I do think they’re both signs of a bigger shift in the way Australians are getting finance.
I can see it happening in our own business.
We’re doing more lending outside the traditional banks than we used to, particularly for borrowers who have a perfectly reasonable plan but don’t quite fit the policy of the bank they’re talking to.
And that’s the important distinction. Sometimes a bank says no because the numbers genuinely don’t work.
Other times, the borrower isn’t necessarily the problem. The lender’s policy is.
The lending market is getting much bigger
Most people naturally start with the bank they already know.
You have your accounts there, perhaps you’ve had a home loan with them for years, and when you want to buy another property or refinance, going back to them seems like the obvious thing to do.
For plenty of borrowers, that works perfectly well.
The problem comes when you want to do something that sits just outside that bank’s normal lending criteria.
It could be as simple as wanting to buy your next home before you’ve sold the current one. You ask your bank about bridging finance, only to discover that its policy requires your existing property to be sold first or imposes conditions that don’t work for your situation.
You might have sold your first home and be ready to buy again, but don’t have a full 20% deposit. Your bank tells you that means paying lenders mortgage insurance.
Or perhaps you’re self-employed. The business is going well and the income is there, but you don’t yet have the tax returns your bank wants to see.
Investors are running into this too. Someone can have significant equity, good income and a strong property portfolio but reach the limit of what their current bank’s servicing calculator will allow them to borrow.
A few years ago, some of these scenarios could leave borrowers with relatively few places to go.
That’s changing.
Alongside the banks, we now have a growing group of non-bank lenders, specialist lenders and broker-distributed products designed around circumstances that don’t always fit neatly into mainstream bank policy.
Some are quite niche. That’s precisely the point.
A ‘no’ from your bank doesn’t necessarily mean no
One of the things I’ve learnt after more than two decades in mortgage broking is that lenders can look at exactly the same borrower and come up with very different answers.
That’s because there isn’t one universal set of rules for getting a home loan.
Every lender has its own credit policy. They can treat income differently, assess existing debts differently, use different servicing calculations and have different rules around deposits, property types and loan structures.
This is where some of the newer specialist products are becoming particularly useful.
Take bridging finance. There are lenders focused specifically on helping people bridge the period between buying one property and selling another. Their policy can look quite different from the bridging policy offered by a major bank.
There are also products aimed at borrowers buying their next home who don’t have a 20% deposit available, as well as specialist options for self-employed borrowers who can demonstrate their income but don’t have the standard financial documentation a bank requires.
Then there are borrowers who simply can’t achieve the borrowing capacity they need with their existing lender.
That doesn’t mean another lender will automatically give them more. But lenders don’t all calculate borrowing capacity in exactly the same way, and sometimes those differences are enough to change what’s possible.
This is a much bigger part of mortgage broking today than simply asking five banks for their interest rates and choosing the cheapest one.
Often, the first question I’m asking is: which lenders will actually consider this scenario?
Only then does it make sense to compare the options.
Sometimes the right loan is a stepping stone
There is a trade-off here that borrowers need to understand.
Specialist lending can be more expensive than mainstream bank lending.
Sometimes the difference in interest rate might be relatively small. In more complicated scenarios it can be considerably larger, and there may be additional fees or conditions involved as well.
That doesn’t automatically make it a bad option.
But it does mean there needs to be a good reason for using it.
I often think of these loans as stepping stones.
You might use a specialist lender because it allows you to buy the property you want before selling another one, because your business doesn’t yet have the financial history a major bank requires, or because your current circumstances don’t fit mainstream servicing policy.
You might stay with that lender for a period of time and then, once the situation that made the specialist loan necessary has changed, refinance back to a mainstream lender.
That’s why focusing entirely on the interest rate can sometimes miss the bigger picture.
If one lender offers the cheapest rate but won’t fund the transaction, it isn’t really an option.
The question becomes whether paying more for a period of time allows you to do something worthwhile, whether you can comfortably afford that additional cost, and whether there’s a sensible plan for moving to a more competitive loan later.
There are also situations where the answer is simply don’t do it. Just because a lender exists that is prepared to provide the money doesn’t mean taking that loan is a good financial decision.
That’s where advice and strategy matter.
Why are so many Australians now using mortgage brokers?
The scale of the shift towards brokers is remarkable.
In June 2018, brokers facilitated 53.9% of new residential home lending in Australia. Today it’s 81.6%.
I don’t think you can put that growth down to one thing.
Consumers have become more comfortable using brokers. The number and variety of lenders available through the broker channel has grown. And the lending environment itself has become more complicated.
But I do think the role of the broker is changing.
When I started doing this, a large part of the job was comparing banks.
Today, increasingly, it’s about knowing where to look when the obvious bank doesn’t work.
That’s particularly important as borrowers’ circumstances become more complicated and lenders respond with increasingly specialised products.
We’re seeing people come to us after being told their borrowing capacity isn’t high enough, that their income can’t be accepted, that they need a larger deposit or that the transaction they want to do simply doesn’t fit their bank’s policy.
Sometimes I look at the numbers and agree with the bank.
Other times, I can see another way of doing it.
And occasionally, it’s a lender or product the borrower would probably never have known existed.
Before you change the plan, find out why the bank said no
If there’s one thing I’d want borrowers to take from all of this, it’s not that there’s always a lender willing to say yes.
There isn’t, and there shouldn’t be.
It’s that one bank saying no isn’t the same as the entire lending market saying no.
If you’ve been told you can’t borrow enough, can’t get the bridging finance you need, don’t have the right deposit or don’t meet a particular lending requirement, find out what is actually causing the problem before abandoning the plan.
Is it your income?
Is it genuinely unaffordable?
Is it the amount of debt you’re carrying?
Or is it simply a policy that belongs to that particular lender?
Those are very different problems.
The traditional banking world can feel narrower when your circumstances don’t fit neatly into it. At the same time, the market sitting outside it has become broader and more sophisticated.
For some borrowers, that’s opening doors they assumed had already closed.
Has your bank told you it can’t be done?
If you’ve been told you can’t borrow enough or your situation doesn’t fit your bank’s policy, we can look at the numbers and the lenders available to work out whether there is another way to approach it.
Sometimes there is. Sometimes there isn’t. I’ll tell you either way.
About the Author
Since 2008, David Thomas has built a business aimed at servicing the needs of property investors, owner occupiers and small business owners. David is recognised as one of the top 10 independent mortgage brokerages in the country, David and his team have settled almost billions of dollars worth of residential and investment loans over the last decade.
Known for his straightforward, relatable style, David believes by educating people about property funding; they fare better in the market. By sharing his expertise openly, some of the people he educates will likely become his clients. It's a win-win approach.
David Thomas is a credit representative (Representative Number 506153) of BLSSA Pty Ltd, ACN 117 651 760 (Australian Credit Licence 391237).