“How much do I need to earn to buy a house?”
It sounds like a straightforward question, but there isn’t one salary that guarantees you a mortgage. Two households earning the same amount
could have quite different borrowing options.
Your income matters, but so do your deposit, expenses, debts and the lender assessing your application.
If you want a new rental, a new home or a refinance settled before Christmas, you need your application in by mid-November. Banks wind down in early December, and anything lodged after that can sit in a queue until late January.
If you’re self-employed and planning to borrow in the next few months, banks now want your financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2026. If your accountant hasn’t finished them yet, your application can stall.
As retirement gets closer, it’s worth looking at whether your mortgage is set up for what comes next. Paying it off may be the goal, but you may also want money available for unexpected expenses, travel or helping your children into a home.
A new job, a pay rise or a move into self-employment can change more than your working week. It can also affect how a bank assesses your income and whether your mortgage still fits your budget.
You might expect every bank to offer you roughly the same mortgage amount. After all, your income, deposit and expenses don’t change when
you approach a different lender.
But banks can assess the same situation differently. Following my recent
newsletter about whether rent could cover mortgage repayments,
this is another useful question to explore: how much could the choice of lender affect your borrowing options?
The 20% deposit has long been treated as the price of admission to home ownership in New Zealand. On a median-priced house that's well north
of $150,000 in cash.
So, National's announcement this week on 5% deposits got attention. But low-deposit lending isn't new – and one pathway at a major bank
isn't limited to first home buyers at all.
If you’re paying rent while saving for a deposit, you may have wondered how those regular payments compare with owning your own home. Could the amount you currently spend on rent, combined with what you’re saving each week, be enough to cover mortgage repayments?