A rough idea of borrowing capacity, nothing more.

How this works

The calculator starts with your net monthly income minus your monthly living expenses and existing debts, then applies a buffer to that surplus to arrive at an assumed affordable monthly repayment. It then works out the loan amount that repayment would service over your chosen term, at your example rate plus an assessment buffer of approximately 3 percentage points, which is roughly in line with the buffer APRA guidance expects lenders to test against.

Real lenders assess borrowing capacity very differently from this. Each lender has its own living-expense benchmarks (often higher than what you enter here), its own assessment rate, and its own treatment of other debts, dependants, income type and existing commitments. Two lenders can give a genuinely different answer for the exact same person. This calculator uses one simple buffer to stay honest about being a rough guide, not a model of how any real lender thinks.

This simple buffer assumes tidy, regular income. If yours is self-employed or comes from a business, the real figure depends heavily on how that income is presented, which is a conversation worth having with David rather than a number this calculator can give you.