Self-Employed Home Loans Mackay
We arrange self-employed home loans across Mackay, assessed on your business figures rather than a payslip. Your tax return is built to show a low profit. That is your accountant doing their job, and it is the single reason a lender will tell you that you earn less than you do.
Which lender you go to decides what that figure comes back as. Two of them can read the same set of financials and land a long way apart, because they disagree about which expenses get added back and what they will accept as evidence. Knowing which is which is what you use a mortgage broker for. If you went out on your own ABN after years in the Mackay mining services sector, you have strong figures and a short trading history, and that combination needs the right lender rather than a lower expectation.
How We Present Your Income to a Lender
We take your business figures, rebuild them the way lenders assess them, and match you to the lender whose policy reads them most favourably. Then we prepare and manage the self-employed home loan through to settlement on your Mackay property.
Two things drive the outcome: which documents your lender will accept as evidence of income, and which expenses they will add back to your taxable figure. Both vary considerably between lenders, and the difference between the most and least accommodating is regularly a large amount of borrowing capacity.
This applies whether you are a sole trader, run a company, work through a trust, or contract to the Mackay mining services sector through your own ABN. If you are paid as an employee with allowances, that is assessed differently and it is covered on our mining and FIFO home loans page.
What Happens After You Get in Touch
We start from your figures, not from a form, because a business does not report itself the way a payslip does.
- 01
First conversation, about 20 minutes.
How you hold the business, how long you have been trading, and roughly what it earns. We tell you which documentation path fits.
- 02
Income reconstruction.
We rebuild your assessable income with the add-backs applied, and tell you which lenders read your figures most favourably and what that means you can borrow.
- 03
Document strategy.
Full-doc, alt-doc via BAS or statements, or an accountant declaration, whichever gives you the strongest position. We will often talk to your accountant directly.
- 04
Pre-approval, typically one to three weeks.
Self-employed files take slightly longer to assess because there is more to verify. We prepare yours properly upfront so a Mackay contract deadline is not waiting on a document request.
- 05
Settlement.
We manage the lender through to completion and keep your accountant in the loop where they need to be.
Your last two years of personal tax returns and notices of assessment if you have them, business financials, recent BAS lodgements, and six to twelve months of business bank statements. If your latest return is not lodged, say so at the start. There are paths that do not need it.
What People Ask Us First
What documents do you need if my latest return is not lodged yet?
Your recent BAS lodgements and six to twelve months of business bank statements will usually do it, or a declaration from your registered tax agent confirming your income.
You are not stuck waiting for lodgement. Tell us at the first conversation and we will point you at lenders who assess on that basis, so you are not held up when you have found a Mackay property and the contract is moving.
What does it cost me to use you?
Nothing for the first conversation, and nothing extra because you are self-employed. On a standard residential loan the lender pays us a commission when it settles, and self-employed files are not charged differently even though they take more work to prepare.
If a fee ever applied to your situation, we would set it out in writing in our Credit Guide before you decided whether to go ahead. You would never find out about a cost after the fact.
Add-backs
What lifts assessed income above taxable incomeDepreciation, one-off expenses, interest on refinanced debt and, with some lenders, retained company profit are added back to what your return shows.
Source: Lender policy varies by lender; current at August 2026Which Self-Employed Home Loan Suits You
We would put you down one of two routes, and which one depends on what you can evidence, not on what you would prefer. Both get you a self-employed home loan in Mackay.
Full documentation is the standard path and it gets you the best pricing. Lenders typically want two years of personal tax returns, your ATO notices of assessment and your business financials. Some will accept a single year where the business is established and the figures are strong. A few will look at under twelve months of trading if you have a solid background in the same industry, which comes up constantly in Mackay, where the usual path is years employed in mining services before going out on your own ABN.
Alternative documentation exists for when the returns are not there or do not tell the story. It works from your BAS lodgements, a declaration from your registered tax agent, or six to twelve months of business bank statements. The trade-off is real: you pay a premium over full-doc pricing and lenders generally cap what they will lend at a lower share of the property value, often somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent.
If You Have Been Told You Can Borrow On A Stated Figure
You cannot, and we will tell you so plainly, because the old terminology persists: true self-certification loans no longer exist. Anything described as "low doc" today still requires verifiable evidence, whether that is BAS, statements or an accountant's declaration. Nobody lends on a stated income figure alone anymore.
So if you have been told someone in Mackay can get you a loan on a stated figure, that is not a product that exists. What we can do is find the lender whose evidence rules your actual figures satisfy.
How We Get Your Real Income Back Onto The Application
Your accountant has spent years legitimately reducing your taxable income. Then you apply for a self-employed home loan and that same work makes you look like you earn much less than you do. Add-backs are how a lender corrects for it.
Certain expenses get added back to your taxable figure because they are not cash actually leaving your pocket, or because they are one-offs. Depreciation is the big one, reducing your tax bill without costing you cash. One-off expenses that will not repeat. Interest on debt you are refinancing, since it is being replaced. And with some lenders, profits retained in the company rather than paid out to you.
If You Leave Money In The Business
You are relying on the add-back where lenders differ most and where the gap is widest. A lender that will count retained company profit can assess you very differently from one that only looks at what you drew personally, so finding the lender whose policy suits how you pay yourself is a large part of what we do for you.
Add-backs have to be legitimate and evidenced from your financials. This is reconstructing your real income from your actual figures, not inflating it.
When Your BAS Tells a Better Story Than Your Return
Where your deductions have been aggressive, your BAS often shows a stronger income picture than your tax return does. It reflects the money moving through the business before the deductions are applied.
For a lender assessing on an alt-doc basis, that can work in your favour. It also solves a timing problem. If your latest return is not lodged yet, you are not stuck waiting: your BAS lodgements and business bank statements can evidence current trading now, which matters when you have found a property and cannot wait for the accountant.
The registered tax agent declaration is the third route. Your accountant confirms your income to the lender in a prescribed form. It has to come from a registered tax agent and it has to be consistent with what has been lodged: a lender will check it against your BAS and your statements, and inconsistency ends the application rather than delaying it.
We look at all three views of your income (return, BAS and statements) and take the strongest defensible one to the lender best suited to it. That comparison is most of the work in an alt-doc self-employed home loan.
If You Contract to the Mackay Mining Services Sector
If you contract to the resources sector out of Mackay, your figures carry a specific pattern that lenders look at closely, and it shapes which self-employed home loans are open to you.
The pattern is usually strong income with uneven timing, and often a small number of large clients rather than many small ones. Both attract questions. Concentration risk, meaning most of your income coming from one or two contracts, is something lenders assess, and a solid history with those clients helps considerably. Given how few major operators there are around Mackay, almost every contractor here has it to some degree, and we frame it that way in the application rather than leaving the assessor to draw their own conclusion.
Equipment finance interacts with this too, and plant-heavy contracting is the norm in Mackay. If you have machinery financed against the business, it counts as a commitment in your home loan assessment, and the way you hold it can affect what you can borrow. We look at the whole picture rather than the home loan in isolation, and if the business itself needs funding that is covered on our commercial and business finance page.
Self-Employed Home Loans Questions
Can I get a loan with one year of ABN history?
Often yes, and occasionally with less. Some lenders accept a single year of returns where the business is established and the figures are strong. A few will consider under twelve months where you have a substantial background in the same industry, which is the common Mackay path: years employed in mining services, then out on your own ABN.
The shortlist is shorter and the terms are usually not the sharpest available. We tell you honestly whether waiting a few months would get you a materially better outcome.
What are add-backs and how do they help me?
They are expenses a lender adds back to your taxable income because they are not real cash outflows or will not recur: depreciation, one-off costs, interest on debt being refinanced, and with some lenders, profit retained in the company.
The effect is that your assessed income can be substantially higher than the figure on your tax return, which is often the difference between a Mackay purchase working and not. Lenders differ most on retained company profit, so the choice of lender matters enormously if you have been leaving money in the business.
Can you get a self-employed home loan without two years of returns?
Often yes. The standard full-doc path wants two years of tax returns and notices of assessment, and it gets you the sharpest pricing. But a number of lenders will write one year, and a smaller group will look at less than twelve months where you have a strong history in the same line of work beforehand.
Below that there is alt-doc, assessed on your BAS, an accountant's declaration or six to twelve months of business bank statements instead of returns. It carries a rate premium and a lower maximum against value, so it is a real option rather than a good one. We would generally use it to buy now and refinance to full-doc once the returns exist.
Are self-employed home loans Mackay harder to get approved?
It is more work, not a lower chance, and a good share of Mackay borrowers are in the same position. The difference is that a payslip states your income and a set of business figures has to be interpreted, and lenders interpret them differently. The same accountant's figures can produce borrowing capacities a long way apart depending on which add-backs a lender accepts.
The pattern that trips people up locally is mining-services contracting: strong income, lumpy timing, a handful of large clients. Some lenders read that as normal for the industry and some read it as concentration risk. Knowing which is most of the job.
What stops a self-employed application being approved?
Most often it is a tax return that legitimately minimised your income, which is sensible for tax and unhelpful for borrowing, and no add-backs available to bring it back up. After that: a most recent year that is lower than the year before, because lenders generally use the lower of the two, unlodged returns, or ATO debt on a payment plan.
Almost all of that is fixable with timing rather than being a permanent no. If your position is going to look better in three months, we say so instead of lodging an application that marks your file.
Who Presents Your Figures
The person who answers is the person who rebuilds your figures the way a lender reads them, then presents them. A file that is well presented is assessed differently from one that is merely complete.
Most of what we arrange is for people whose income is not a flat salary, because in Mackay that is most of the work, and it is the part the big lenders handle worst. Contractors to the mines and the cane sit in the same pile as every other trading business, which is where a well built file earns its keep.
- Where we are
- Mackay, QLD 4740
- Where we work
- The city and its suburbs, north to the beaches, south past the port, and inland through the cane country to the Pioneer Valley
- What it costs to ask
- Nothing. The first conversation is free and the lender pays us.
Talk to a Mortgage Broker in Mackay
Tell us where you are up to and we will tell you what your options are, which lenders suit your situation and what the next step looks like. If the answer is that you are better off waiting three months, we tell you that instead.
If a fee ever applied to your situation it would be in writing in our Credit Guide, before you decided anything.