Can You Get a Home Loan on a Temporary Visa in Australia? (2026 Guide)

If you’re living and working in Australia on a temporary visa, you may have heard that the rules for buying a home changed in 2025, and you may have been told that temporary residents are locked out. The full picture is better than that, and it mostly comes down to your visa and who’s buying with you.

In this guide, a temporary resident means someone living in Australia on a temporary visa with work rights, such as a 482, 485, 491, 494, partner or bridging visa. Lenders and the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) read the term differently: lenders look at your work rights and the time left on your visa, while FIRB treats most temporary visa holders as foreign persons.

This article covers:

• Whether you can get a home loan on a temporary visa
• What the current rules let you buy on your own
• The partner route that opens established homes
• What each visa subclass can do, with a dedicated guide for each
• How much deposit you actually need
• What opens up when you get permanent residency

Can you get a home loan on a temporary visa in Australia?

Yes. Most temporary visa holders can get a home loan in Australia. Buying as joint tenants with an Australian citizen, permanent resident or New Zealand citizen partner, you can borrow up to around 95% and buy an established home, exempt from FIRB approval and its fee. Buying on your own, you can finance a new dwelling or vacant land with FIRB approval, usually with around a 20% deposit.

Which route applies, and how much you can borrow, depends on your visa and on whether an eligible partner is on the title. The rest of this guide walks through both paths.

Buying on your own: what the current rules allow

Under the current foreign investment rules, a temporary resident buying alone generally cannot purchase an established dwelling. On your own, you can buy a new or near-new dwelling, or vacant land to build on, with FIRB approval and the FIRB application fee. Those fees are indexed every year, so we confirm the current figure with you rather than quoting a number that dates quickly.

The established-dwelling restriction is currently in place and has been extended further this decade, so it is the rule to plan around. The detail is on the ATO’s foreign investment pages and in our full FIRB guide. If you do not hold permanent residency at all, our guide on getting a home loan without PR covers the wider picture.

So on a solo basis the picture is: a new build or land, FIRB approval, and usually a larger deposit. The path that opens established homes is the partner route.

The partner route: established homes, FIRB-exempt

In practice, this is what puts an established home, the kind of place you actually want to live in, back within reach, often at up to around 95% of the purchase price. It is also why most temporary residents who buy a home to live in do it with their partner rather than alone.

The structure matters. Joint tenants and tenants in common are not the same thing, and the exemption depends on getting it right, so we make sure the ownership is set up correctly before anything is lodged. If this is your situation, our partner visa home loans page goes deeper, and the FIRB guide covers the rules in full.

Which temporary visa are you on?

Lenders and FIRB treat visas differently, so your visa shapes both your home loan options and what you can buy. The short version, each with a dedicated guide:

• 482 visa (Skills in Demand / TSS): steady employment-based appetite with the right lender, and a qualifying partner opens the established-home path
• 485 graduate visa: lendable, and far more so buying with an Australian citizen partner via the joint-tenant exemption
• 491 and 494 regional visas: more limited on your own, but a qualifying partner changes the picture
• Partner visa (309 / 820) and bridging visa A or B: strong options, and the joint-tenant exemption usually applies when buying with your Australian partner
• Student visa: limited on your own; lending is realistic mainly with an Australian citizen or permanent resident partner

If your visa is not listed, it does not mean no. It means the answer depends on the lender and your situation, which is exactly what we check.

How much deposit you actually need

A lot of temporary residents assume they need a 20% deposit before they can even start. With the partner route and the right lender, that’s often not the case.

When you borrow more than 80%, lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) usually applies. LMI is a one-off cost, commonly around 1% to 2% of the purchase price, and it protects the lender rather than you. We’ll show you the larger-deposit and smaller-deposit numbers side by side so you can weigh the trade-off for your situation.

What changes when you get PR

Permanent residency widens your options considerably. Once you hold PR or citizenship, more lenders will consider you, established homes are open without any FIRB question, and first-home buyers may be able to use the expanded Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme, which has no income caps or place limits. If PR is on the horizon, it is worth planning now so you can move the moment it is granted. Our permanent resident home loans guide covers what opens up.

Why temporary residents choose MAP Home Loans

Buying here when you are new to the system, on a visa, and possibly facing a lender that does not understand your situation is genuinely harder than it should be. This is the exact problem we work on every day. A few reasons temporary residents bring it to us:

• The lenders most likely to say yes, found first. Our VSL Matrix™ (Visa × Situation × Lender) matches your visa and circumstances to the lenders most likely to approve before you apply, so you are not damaging your credit file with scattered applications to banks that were never going to say yes.
• Access to 31+ lenders, not one bank’s policy. A branch will not tell you the lender down the road is a better fit for a temporary resident. We know the policies, the rates, and the appetite across the panel.
• Real experience with this exact situation. We have placed home loans for hundreds of temporary and non-resident borrowers, and guide you through each step rather than leave you to work it out.
• A free service, paid by the lender. For most home loans our service costs you nothing, because the lender pays us, not you. Your rates, fees, and charges are the same as going to the lender directly.

The way we work is built into our name. We Match you to the lenders most likely to approve your specific visa and situation, Apply with the strongest version of your case, and then you Purchase the home.

Frequently asked questions

With one 15 to 30 minute call, we’ll tell you straight if we can help. Book a Lending Assessment at no cost or obligation.

This article is general information, not personal credit, tax, or migration advice. Lender policies, FIRB rules, and visa requirements change; confirm your situation with MAP Home Loans and the relevant authority before you act.