Home Loans in a Company Name: Broker Requirements

A home loan in a company name is a residential loan where the company borrows in its own right and owns the property. Before you lodge one, confirm that the lender writes company home loans. Then document who controls the company, who guarantees the debt and which company income repays it.

Acceptance differs by lender. Pepper Money and Bluestone both lend to companies, according to Pepper Money’s 21 August 2026 product guide and Bluestone’s policy guide, last updated 10 November 2025. Macquarie’s 10 September 2026 residential guidelines accept natural persons only.

Income needs the most care. A director’s salary is an expense in the company’s accounts and income on the director’s tax return, so the same earnings can be counted twice unless you reconcile them first.

Identify the Legal Borrower

The legal borrower is the entity named on the loan contract, and in a company home loan that’s the company acting for itself. It signs the contract, holds the title and owes the debt. Directors and shareholders owe the debt only if they sign a guarantee.

A company can also sign as trustee of a trust. The contract then names it as, for example, “Reid Joinery Pty Ltd as trustee for the Reid Family Trust”. The company still signs, but it holds the property for the trust’s beneficiaries, and lenders assess that loan under their trust policies, which the family trust home loan guide explains.

A Simple Ownership Map

This fictional example follows one company through the rest of this guide. Reid Joinery Pty Ltd is a trading company that wants to buy a $780,000 house in its own name. Ava Reid and Marcus Reid are its directors, and Ava’s father, Graham, holds shares but isn’t a director.

Party	Role in the company	Role in the loan
Reid Joinery Pty Ltd	Trading company that will own the house	Borrower and mortgagor
Ava Reid	Director, 60% shareholder	Proposed guarantor and proposed tenant
Marcus Reid	Director, 30% shareholder	Proposed guarantor
Graham Reid	10% shareholder, not a director	Guarantor only where the lender or insurer requires shareholders to guarantee

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) companies register shows the directors and shareholders of a proprietary company, according to ASIC’s company registration guide. It shows the same names whether Reid Joinery buys for itself or as trustee. The contract of sale and the loan application show which capacity the company is signing in, so check the purchaser’s name on the contract before you choose a lender.

Assess Directors and Guarantees

Lenders that accept a company borrower assess the people behind it as well as the company. They check who the directors and shareholders are, which of them will guarantee the loan, and what debts those people and their other entities already carry.

Who Must Guarantee

Guarantee rules differ by lender and insurer. Under Bluestone’s quick policy guide, last updated 10 November 2025, every director must guarantee a company borrower, and the company can have no more than four directors. For Reid Joinery, Ava and Marcus sign guarantees and Graham doesn’t need to.

Helia’s 10 August 2026 lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) underwriting guidelines go further. Where the lender insures a company loan with Helia, all directors and shareholders give unconditional joint and several personal guarantees, so Graham guarantees too. Each guarantor completes a full application, and the lender verifies their employment and income even when that income isn’t needed to service the loan.

Macquarie’s 10 September 2026 residential credit guidelines accept only natural persons as borrowers, yet their advice section still covers directors of company borrowers. Those directors give personal guarantees and get independent legal advice, but not independent financial advice.

Checks on Directors and Related Entities

Macquarie’s guidelines show how a lender checks the people behind a loan. Macquarie sources a credit report for every borrower and guarantor and asks for each financial enquiry in the last three months to be explained.

The lender also looks at every other entity a director controls. Macquarie asks a director to declare that each company or trust they direct is profitable and meeting its liabilities. Where that isn’t true, Macquarie asks for that entity’s financials and counts a closing entity’s outstanding debts in servicing.

Serviceability is the lender’s test of whether the borrower can afford the repayments, which the loan serviceability guide explains. A company loan follows its directors into their own later applications.

Macquarie investigates an applicant’s open Macquarie loans taken through a company, and guarantees shown on the credit report. It asks for confirmation that the borrowing entity can keep paying with a 3% buffer on its repayments, without extra money from the applicant.

Reconcile the Director’s Salary

Reconcile each director’s salary against company profit before you work out the repayment capacity. The salary has already reduced company profit, so it can count as company income or as the director’s personal income, but not both.

In this fictional example, Reid Joinery’s 2025-26 financials show net profit before tax of $150,000 after paying Ava $110,000 and Marcus $70,000. The balance sheet at 30 June 2026 shows retained earnings of $420,000 and $260,000 cash at bank.

Figure	Amount	Where it can count
Net profit before tax	$150,000	Company income
Directors’ salaries	$180,000	Added back to company income, or counted as Ava’s and Marcus’s personal income, never both
Retained earnings	$420,000	Not income, because it’s accumulated after-tax profit, including this year’s, already counted in the years it was earned
Cash at bank	$260,000	Funds that can pay the deposit, if they’re still there at settlement

Together, profit and salaries come to $330,000 of earnings. If the salaries are added back to company profit and also counted as the guarantors’ personal income, the file shows $510,000, which overstates the earnings by $180,000.

A 30% deposit on the $780,000 house is $234,000. Paying it from company cash leaves $26,000 at bank for purchase costs and the company’s working capital, so the balance sheet the lender reads after settlement holds far less cash.

Reconcile Company Income

Company income for a home loan is the company’s profit, adjusted once for director salaries and one-off items. Separate the company’s profit, the directors’ remuneration and any dividends before you choose which figures support the loan. The self-employed home loan guide explains how lenders adjust business profit with add-backs.

Profit, Remuneration and Distributions

Keep these three figures apart and count each one once.

1. Profit stays in the company until it pays tax or a dividend. It’s the company’s income in the year it was earned.
2. Director remuneration, such as salary, is a company expense and the director’s personal income.
3. A dividend pays out profit the company has already earned, often from earlier years.

Suppose Reid Joinery pays Ava a $40,000 dividend from its retained earnings. That dividend is profit the company earned and reported earlier, so count it as Ava’s income or as company profit for that earlier year, but not as both.

Records That Prove the Repayment Source

Collect evidence that the company earns the income and that each guarantor can meet their guarantee. Westpac’s minimum required documents checklist for company applicants, as at October 2026, and Macquarie’s 10 September 2026 standard income evidence list most of them.

• The company’s tax returns and accountant-prepared financials for the last two years.
• Each director’s personal tax returns for two years and their latest notice of assessment (NOA) from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
• Details and supporting documents for every company commitment and liability, which Westpac’s checklist requires.
• Each director’s other directorships, shareholdings and interests in other entities.
• ATO statements for any company tax debt, because Westpac’s checklist lists tax debts among the liabilities it verifies.
• A current ASIC company extract showing the directors and shareholders.
• Each guarantor’s full application with their financial position and employment, which Helia’s 10 August 2026 guidelines require for guarantors on loans it insures.

Macquarie doesn’t accept cash flow projections or other projected income. A forecast of rent or future profit doesn’t prove the repayment source at that lender.

Prepare the Lender Enquiry

Send the lender a written enquiry before you lodge. Include these details in this order.

1. The borrowing purpose: a company purchase of a residential property, how it will be used and who will live in it.
2. An ownership chart showing every director and shareholder of the company and any trust the company acts for.
3. The proposed guarantors and whether each one is a director, a shareholder or both.
4. Existing liabilities of the company, each director and each related entity, including tax debts.
5. The repayment source, with company profit, director salaries and any rent each counted once.

Written policy is the evidence that a lender accepts this borrower type. Pepper Money’s 21 August 2026 product guide lists companies among the borrowers it lends to, with a maximum of six borrowers. Bluestone’s guide, last updated 10 November 2025, sets out its company borrower conditions.

An unanswered policy question is different. Macquarie’s guidelines list natural persons as the acceptable borrowers, so a company borrower sits outside them. Macquarie sends scenarios outside its guidelines to the business development manager (BDM), and any approval is an exception for that file, so get it in writing for your file notes.

To see which lenders cover company borrowers before you send enquiries, Bulma’s Policy Advisor puts the question to 52+ lenders at once. The answer quotes each lender’s policy wording and names the lenders whose policy doesn’t address company borrowers, so written acceptance and open questions are separated before you call a BDM.

Related-Party Occupancy

Yes, a company can own a house and lease it to one of its directors when the lender accepts both the company borrower and a related-party tenant. For a client asking whether their company can buy a house and rent it to them, the lender checks genuine purpose, lease evidence, rent treatment and guarantees.

Investing through a company doesn’t automatically put the loan under a lender’s ordinary investor policy. Ask the lender how it classifies the loan, and how it treats rent from a director, before you assume either.

Genuine Purpose

Show what the company gains from owning the property. Pepper Money’s 21 August 2026 product guide requires every mortgage application to clearly show a financial benefit to the applicants, and here the applicant is the company. A house bought mainly as a home for a director, with rent below market, makes that benefit harder to show.

Lease Evidence and Rent Treatment

Prepare a signed lease that states the rent, the start date and the end date. Macquarie lends to individuals only, but its 10 September 2026 rent rule shows how a lender can treat a related-party lease. For a proposed purchase, it counts the lesser of the valuer’s rent, a licensed agent’s estimate and a tenancy agreement that’s arm’s length through a real estate agent.

In this fictional example, Ava agrees to pay Reid Joinery $650 a week. The valuer assesses market rent at $620 a week and a local agent estimates $630. Under Macquarie’s rule, the lender would count $620, because Ava’s lease with her own company isn’t arm’s length through an agent.

Rent from a director can also be the company’s own money coming back. Ava pays $33,800 a year in rent from her $110,000 salary. If the lender adds her salary back to company income and also counts the rent, the same $33,800 appears twice.

Macquarie’s guidelines don’t apply a negative gearing benefit to loans in the name of a company or trust. Ask each lender whether it counts any tax benefit before relying on one in a company’s servicing.

Guarantees When the Director Is the Tenant

A director who rents the house and guarantees the loan carries two obligations. If the company can’t pay, the lender can call on Ava’s guarantee while she’s still paying rent to the company. Both obligations come from the same household budget, so check Ava’s position as a guarantor and as a tenant together.

Questions for Qualified Advisers

Send the ownership, tax and legal questions to the client’s accountant and lawyer before the client signs a contract. The answers can change whether a company is the right buyer at all.

• Division 7A: the ATO’s Division 7A guidance, last updated 8 February 2017, treats a lease of real property to a shareholder or associate as a payment. The accountant can confirm whether the rent and terms create a deemed dividend.
• Fringe benefits tax: the same ATO page says fringe benefits tax can apply instead of Division 7A when the shareholder is also an employee. Ava draws a salary, so her accountant needs to check this.
• Capital gains tax: the ATO’s capital gains tax discount page, last updated 29 June 2026, says companies can’t use the discount.
• Legal documents: the lawyer reviews the lease and the guarantees. Macquarie’s guidelines already require independent legal advice for directors who guarantee a company borrower.

Lodge the company home loan once the accountant and lawyer have confirmed the structure and the lender has accepted the company in writing. Before you submit, check that the director’s salary and the rent each count once in the file.