Eternity Group

Finance · Business owners

Business Owner Home Loans

Home loans for Pty Ltd company directors and business owners. Company financial statements, director salary versus dividends versus distributions, retained earnings, add-backs and business-debt treatment read the same way the lender reads them — by a Credit Representative who also prepares the company return.

Book a Business Owner Loan CallSee self-employed home loans

Mr Rohan Manokaran (Credit Representative 565110) is authorised under Australian Credit Licence 561324 held by Loans Only Pty Ltd. Information on this page is general in nature and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Credit eligibility, lender criteria, fees and charges apply.

What this page is for

The company financials are the application.

This is the narrow case: you own and direct a Pty Ltd company, and your personal home loan is read out of the company's returns and how you pay yourself. It is distinct from the broader self-employed service, which also covers sole traders and contractors.

If you trade as a sole trader or contractor, the broader self-employed home loans page is the right starting point. This page narrows to the company-director case, where a lender does not simply read one income figure. It reads your director salary, then asks what dividends or director-loan drawings it will accept, then looks at company net profit, retained earnings and add-backs from the company return and financial statements — and decides how much of each layer counts as income available to service a personal mortgage.

Those layers interact. A profitable company that retains most of its earnings and pays its director a modest wage can look weak on a payslip and strong on the financials — or the reverse, depending entirely on which lender is reading it. The shape of how you have paid yourself over the last two years is, in practice, the single largest driver of what a company director can borrow.

When the same practitioner prepares the company return and arranges the loan, the financials the lender sees are the financials we built, the add-backs are ones we can stand behind, and the year-end return that follows stays consistent with what was lodged. Same person; same documents; both sides of the application.

Lender perspective

What a lender reads off a director's file.

Most of the policy difference between one lender and the next, for a company director, comes back to these six areas. Knowing each lender's position in advance is how the file is built around the lender rather than the other way around.

Director salary & wages

PAYG summary · most consistent layer

The wage you pay yourself through the company is the figure lenders treat most uniformly. A clean two-year PAYG history is the simplest foundation for a director application, and where it covers most of the household need, the rest of the file matters less.

Dividends & drawings

Franked dividends · director loan account

Many lenders count franked dividends with a two-year pattern; one-off dividends are often shaded or excluded. Director-loan drawings are read carefully and need to reconcile to the financials. How you have historically distributed profit shapes the lender shortlist.

Company net profit

Allowable share · added back or not

Some lenders add an allowable share of after-tax company profit to your assessable income; others count only what was distributed. For a profitable company, which approach applies is frequently the largest single swing in borrowing capacity.

Retained earnings

Balance-sheet strength · policy-dependent

Profit left inside the company shows on the balance sheet as retained earnings. A subset of lenders give it weight as available income; others treat it as company equity only. It also supports the overall strength of the application.

Add-backs

Depreciation · company tax · one-offs

Depreciation, company tax already paid, interest on debt being refinanced and genuine one-off expenses are added back by some lenders and not others. Choosing a lender with the right add-back appetite for your company is core to the modelling — and we see these items at year-end.

Business debt

Face value · notional · excluded

A facility in the company name can be added as a personal liability at face value, served at a notional rate, or excluded where the company clearly services it from its own cash flow. Treatment moves borrowing capacity meaningfully and is checked lender by lender.

Suited to

Company directors we work with.

Single-director Pty Ltd

Owner-operators who hold 100% of the company and pay themselves a mix of wage and dividend. The cleanest director profile — but how the wage-versus-dividend split was set still decides the lender shortlist.

Multi-director companies

Two- or small-board companies where each director's share of profit, drawings and any director-loan account needs to be untangled and evidenced against the financial statements before a lender will count it.

Director plus operating trust

A company that operates beneath, or alongside, a family trust. Distributions and inter-entity flows are read differently by different lenders; the documentation set expands and the shortlist narrows.

Profitable retainers

Directors of companies that retain most of their earnings rather than distributing them. Strong on the balance sheet, modest on a payslip — the case where lender choice changes the borrowing figure the most.

The decision that matters

How you pay yourself decides what you can borrow.

For a company director, the wage-versus-dividend-versus-retained-profit mix is a tax decision and a lending decision at the same time. They are usually made by different people. Here they are made by one.

A common pattern: a director keeps their wage low and leaves profit in the company for tax efficiency. That can be a sound year-end position. But it can also leave the household looking under-funded to a lender that only counts wages and distributed dividends — even though the company is plainly profitable. The fix is not to overhaul the tax position; it is to know, before you apply, which lenders read company profit and retained earnings the way your structure needs them to.

Where a purchase is on the horizon, the better outcome often comes from planning the remuneration mix a year or two ahead — distributing enough, in the right form, with a clean two-year pattern, so the income the lender reads matches the income the business genuinely produces. That is a conversation that belongs at the company return, which is exactly where it happens here. These are general comments; the right mix depends on your circumstances and the relevant income year, and the tax and the lending implications should both be considered.

The point of running both sides under one roof is that the trade-off is visible. We can show what a given remuneration decision does to the company tax outcome and to borrowing capacity at the same time, instead of optimising one and discovering the cost to the other at application.

Process

From scoping to settlement — typically 4–8 weeks.

A document-driven sequence built on the company financials. Lender shortlisting and pre-assessment happen before any credit-file enquiry.

Scoping call

Company structure, ownership, how you pay yourself, existing personal and business facilities, deposit, target property and timing. We confirm whether the current remuneration mix suits a near-term application.

Document collection

Two years of personal and company returns with NoAs, financial statements, the four most recent BAS, the ATO account position, business and personal bank statements, all debt statements, identification.

Pre-assessment & lender shortlist

Multi-lender modelling of director income — wage, dividends, allowable profit share, retained earnings and add-backs — with the business-debt treatment confirmed. Shortlist documented with policy rationale before any credit-file enquiry.

Formal application

Application to the shortlisted lender, with the company financials and director-income narrative already assembled. We track progress and answer lender queries from documents already in hand.

Pre-approval & property

Conditional pre-approval issued. Once a property is under contract, the file progresses to unconditional approval — full valuation, verification and contract review.

Settlement & ongoing

Settlement on the contract date. The following year-end company return already understands the loan and the remuneration position — no rework, no inconsistency between what was lodged and what was assessed.

Frequently asked questions

Business owner home loans — common questions.

For a Pty Ltd director, a lender rarely takes one figure. It typically builds a personal serviceability income from your director salary or wages, plus any dividends or director loan drawings the lender will accept, plus an allowable share of company profit and add-backs read from the company tax return and financial statements. Because the same practitioner prepares the company return, we know which of those layers a given lender will count and which it will leave out — before any application is lodged.

How we are paid

How we are paid: Eternity Mortgage Solutions typically receives commissions from the lender for loans arranged on your behalf. A full explanation of how we are paid, our lender panel and any potential conflicts of interest is provided in our Credit Guide and Credit Proposal Disclosure document, available on request before any loan application is submitted.

Related

Where this fits in the bigger picture

Business owner home loans sit between the broader self-employed service, the company tax return that produces the financials, and the borrowing position modelled before any application.