Granite Home Loans Lending Policy 2026

Granite Home Loans has separate policies for Standard residential lending, Easy Refinance, construction and self-managed super fund (SMSF) borrowing. Match your client’s borrower structure and loan purpose to the product first. A maximum loan-to-value ratio (LVR), which compares the loan with the security value, doesn’t establish that the client qualifies.

Confirm the Granite Product and Distribution Route

Granite distributes home loans exclusively through brokers, according to its About Us page as at October 2026. The page identifies Granite Home Loans Pty Ltd, Australian Credit Licence 516104, as part of ColCap Financial Group, a non-bank lending group.

Use that legal identity when distinguishing Granite Home Loans from similarly named finance businesses.

Granite’s Granite product range separates Standard, Standard Easy Refinance, Construction and SMSF products. It also lists lender-paid lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) products and a 40-Year Extended Home Loan. LMI protects the lender against loss when the borrower defaults.

The lender policy guides help compare product requirements across lenders. Record the exact product before collecting documents. For example, an ordinary residential refinance and an SMSF refinance have different borrowers and evidence.

Product availability is separate from broker access. Use the Granite broker portal guide for accreditation, sign-in and application entry.

Check Borrower and Credit Fit

Granite’s Standard Owner Occupied product sheet, dated 17 July 2026, accepts full-documentation individuals, companies and trusts with clear credit. It lists Australian citizens or permanent residents as acceptable borrowers.

The proposed entity and each applicant’s residency must fit the selected product.

Classify employment by who earns the income and who controls the business. Granite’s 7 August 2026 policy document requires 24 months of trading for self-employed applicants. It sets different tenure rules for permanent employment, casual work and contracts.

An applicant’s company salary alone doesn’t establish that the applicant is an unrelated employee.

Standard Easy Refinance has its own credit gate. As at October 2026, Granite’s Easy Refinance page requires an existing loan held for at least 12 months with satisfactory conduct. Each applicant needs an Equifax Apply One comprehensive credit score of at least 600.

Companies and trusts need at least 24 months of establishment.

List every liability alongside its repayment and limit. Separate a published condition, such as the Easy Refinance score threshold, from an exception request about a particular missed payment. Describe the event and its date in the request, then retain Granite’s written decision with the applicable product policy.

Verify Income, Deposit and Evidence

Use the evidence checklist for the selected Granite product, because Easy Refinance and full-documentation assessment require different records. Granite’s Application Documents page, checked in October 2026, provides separate Standard Full Doc, Standard Easy Refinance and SMSF checklists.

Granite’s Easy Refinance page requires a mortgage statement covering at least 90 days. A statement more than 60 days old needs a transaction listing without a gap. Transaction, savings or offset statements must cover the corresponding period and show the source of repayments.

This requirement applies to that refinance route, not every income assessment.

For full-documentation lending, connect each income figure to its record. Use wage evidence for salary, business records for trading income and tenancy evidence for rent. Explain differences between declared income and the amounts shown in documents before calculating loan serviceability, which measures the client’s ability to meet repayments.

Granite’s public policy page, as at October 2026, treats accumulated savings held over three months as genuine savings. Its evidence table calls for bank statements within the last three months.

Property equity needs six months of ownership, supported by title, rates and loan records where applicable.

Treat deposit evidence and total cash needed as separate calculations. A gift must be identified as a gift, with its repayment status recorded. Reconcile the deposit against the purchase price, transaction costs and available funds.

For refinancing, reconcile the payout figure and any requested cash-out against the proposed new loan.

Granite’s policy page requires digital verification of identity for new applications from 18 May 2026. Include the identity evidence alongside the financial documents. A complete financial pack without required identity evidence isn’t ready for assessment.

Assess Property, Security and LVR

Granite’s Standard product page, as at October 2026, publishes a maximum 95% LVR including LMI and a maximum loan of $3,500,000. Both are subject to its Postcode Matrix.

Neither maximum applies automatically to every security.

Describe the property’s actual use and location before selecting a lending limit. Include the address, title arrangement, dwelling type and any unusual features. A standard house and a property with mixed business use need different security classification.

The home loan security guide explains how those distinctions affect assessment.

Use the lender’s accepted valuation for the final LVR calculation. A contract price or borrower estimate can be a starting assumption, but it doesn’t settle the security value.

In this hypothetical Standard purchase, a $640,000 loan against an accepted $800,000 value has an 80% LVR. If the accepted value is $760,000, the same loan has an LVR of about 84.2%. The loan now crosses the product’s published 80% LMI boundary, even though the requested amount hasn’t changed.

Record the loan amount and LVR together with the property category. A postcode limit, valuation condition or unacceptable use can prevent a scenario from fitting even below a headline maximum.

Match Loan Purpose and Repayment Structure

Granite Standard supports residential owner-occupied and investment purchases and refinancing, as at October 2026. Its page lists fixed or variable rates and principal-and-interest or interest-only repayments. Offset, redraw and multiple splits are also listed features.

Structure affects what the borrower can do with surplus money. Granite’s Standard page caps the combined fixed-rate offset balance and additional repayments at $20,000 in any 12-month period. Exceeding that limit can trigger a break cost.

An offset on a fixed loan therefore needs its own discussion about expected balances.

Granite’s Construction page, checked in October 2026, supports owner-occupied and investment building or major renovations. It excludes cash-out. It requires owner-occupied loans above 80% LVR to convert to principal-and-interest after completion, and investment loans above 90% must do the same.

For Easy Refinance, the dedicated page lists variable principal-and-interest lending up to 80% LVR. The new rate must be lower than the existing rate, with the existing rate no more than two percentage points higher. This is an eligibility relationship, not a current rate quotation.

Cash-out limits differ by product. Easy Refinance caps equity release at 3% of the security value, up to $50,000. Apply that specific limit when assessing the refinance, and record what the additional funds will buy.

Prepare the Scenario and Escalate Policy

Send Granite a defined scenario with the product name and the precise policy decision you need. As at October 2026, Granite’s broker pages provide scenarios@granitehomeloans.com.au and 1300 232 999. Its product sheets identify option 5 for scenarios.

Use this sequence to make the enquiry assessable.

1. Identify each borrower and entity, residency, employment type and loan purpose.
2. Set out income sources and the proposed assessment amounts, followed by liabilities and household expenses.
3. State the loan amount, property value, LVR and security address, including any unusual use or title.
4. Explain the deposit source or refinance payout, funds to complete and requested repayment structure.
5. Name the policy passage and source date, then ask the exact question that remains for this case.

For example, a useful enquiry asks whether a named Standard borrower with a disclosed employment change meets the tenure rule. It provides the start dates and prior employment history. Asking whether Granite accepts the client without those facts leaves the credit team to reconstruct the scenario.

Record the respondent’s name and role, response date, product and any conditions. Distinguish confirmation for this scenario from a general policy amendment. Before application entry, confirm that the documents and structure match the response, using the Granite portal guide for the appropriate entry route.

Granite Home Loan Review: Fit and Constraints

Granite suits a scenario when the selected product’s borrower, security and evidence requirements match the client’s needs. Its published product range, checked in October 2026, gives brokers separate routes for ordinary residential lending, streamlined refinancing and SMSF borrowing.

A product feature is useful only when the client can use it within that product’s conditions.

For a straightforward residential purchase, review the Standard product’s full-documentation requirements and security limits. For an existing loan with satisfactory conduct, compare Easy Refinance’s reduced evidence route against its credit and cash-out conditions. A building project needs the Construction policy and a repayment plan for completion.

Assess cost through the product’s current fee schedule and personalised offer. Include any protection or risk fee, valuation and legal costs, plus discharge or break costs on the existing loan. A lower rate alone doesn’t establish a cheaper refinance.

Customer reviews describe an individual’s experience. They don’t establish current eligibility, acceptable property types or the documents Granite needs. Use dated product evidence to decide policy fit, and keep service sentiment separate from that decision.

SMSF Lending Policy

Granite’s SMSF product sheet dated 25 September 2026 restricts residential purchases to binding contracts exchanged before 10 August 2026. Residential refinancing requires the property to have been held within the fund before that date. These are distinct tests.

For commercial purchases with contracts exchanged on or after 10 August 2026, the property must qualify as Business Real Property. It must be used wholly and exclusively in one or more businesses when the limited recourse borrowing arrangement (LRBA) begins and throughout it. Under an LRBA, lender recourse is limited to the acquired asset.

The dated SMSF product sheet requires a corporate trustee and Australian citizens or permanent residents. It lists maximum LVRs of 80% for principal-and-interest and 75% for interest-only. Construction and vacant land are excluded.

Granite’s SMSF page, as at October 2026, accepts actual and proposed contributions. Proposed contributions need a form signed by the member’s accountant or financial planner. The page limits them to 10% of the member’s gross annual income or the primary trading entity’s net profit before tax, with depreciation and salary drawings added back.

Granite also requires repayment history information below 3 over the past 12 months for proposed contributions. The member’s comprehensive credit report supplies that history.

The fund’s contribution evidence and investment income must support repayments. Liquidity is assessed at application, and the trustee remains responsible for the fund’s ongoing obligations. A pension-phase member requires case-by-case credit assessment.

Granite’s SMSF Offset Sub-account Guide, updated 28 July 2026, distinguishes the offset from a deposit account. It restricts outgoing transactions to BPAY and online redraws to the cash management account in the same name as the SMSF loan. Pay Anyone and third-party transfers are unavailable.

The guide also excludes a redraw feature on the SMSF loan itself. Keep the fund’s account ownership and transaction purpose consistent with the permitted offset channels. Use Granite’s SMSF document checklist and contribution form for the selected route, then retain the property dates and trustee evidence with the scenario request.