What is home equity?

If you own your home chances are you've built up some equity. You can borrow against equity to buy an investment property, renovate or achieve other goals.
What is home equity?
Your home equity is the difference between your property's market value and the balance of your mortgage. If you’ve owned your home for a few years, there’s a good chance you’ve built up some reasonable equity in your property. This can be a valuable resource when it comes to property investment.

Equity explained by our home loan expert

Refinancing is often a tactic used to free up the equity you have in your current home in order to fund purchases or lifestyle goals.

Our home loan expert explains the term 'home equity' and how it can be accessed and outlines ways in which it may be used.

Buying an investment property with home equity

Accessing equity in your home is a great strategy to buy another property or renovating. One of the popular ways to access your home equity is to refinance.

  • An equity loan lets you borrow against the equity in your home
  • Your home equity can be used instead of a cash deposit to buy an investment property
  • Investment property loans are often structured around using home equity
  • How much equity you can use will vary between lenders.

Steps to access equity

  • 1
    Calculate the available equity

    Work out the amount of equity available in your property using the estimated market value of your home – commonly based on comparable sales within your area or a real estate agent valuation, less the balance of your current loans secured by the property.

  • 2
    Work out the “accessible” equity

    Work out how much money is required to achieve your plans. You may or may not want to – or be able to – access the full amount of equity that’s available, and your servicing capability is an important factor in this discussion. That is, your ability to service any additional repayments may have an impact on the amount of equity that you can access. Say, for example, that you have $150,000 worth of equity in your property. However, the amount of additional repayments you can afford based on your income and expenses works out to be $50,000; then realistically that’s the amount you would proceed to unlock, rather than the full $150,000 that’s available.

    Table 1: Working out accessible equity

    80% of Property Value

    Remaining loan amount

    Home equity available to access*

    $500,000

    $100,000

    $400,000

    $600,000

    $300,000

    $300,000

    $750,000

    $400,000

    $350,000

    $800,000

    $425,000

    $375,000

    $900,000

    $650,000

    $250,000

    $1,000,000

    $700,000

    $300,000

    $1,250,000

    $700,000

    $550,000

    *Home equity available to access calculated using 80% of total property value – remaining loan amount

  • 3
    Review your loan options

    At this point of the process, you may want to start researching and assessing your home loan options with a Mortgage Choice broker. This is also a good opportunity for your broker to do a “health check” on your current home loan, comparing it based on factors such as interest rates, fees and features against other options from your current lender or other lenders in the market.

  • 4
    Work out the costs for accessing equity

    The product you choose and the amount of equity you are looking to access may result in various fees and costs. For example, if you choose to access over 80 percent of your property's value, you will likely need to pay Lenders' Mortgage Insurance (LMI). If you decide to switch to another lender, there may be costs such as fees associated with breaking from a fixed rate product, new loan application fee or government fees.

  • 5
    Loan application and settlement

    Once you've decided on a loan option with your Mortgage Choice broker, they'll work with you to get the application process underway and support you at every step to settlement.


Unlocking equity to invest

If you’ve owned your home for a few years, there’s a good chance you’ve built up some reasonable equity, and this can be a valuable resource when it comes to property investment.

We can help you to find out how much equity you have in your home, and how you might be able to use it to own an investment property sooner. Watch this quick video to find out more.

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Common questions

The simple way to know how much equity you have in your home is by calculating the difference between the current property's value and the total remaining balance to pay off on your mortgage.

Calculate home loan equity by taking your property's current market value and subtracting the remaining loan balance.

Property's market value - Remaining loan balance = Your home equity

For example, if your home is worth $700,000 and there is $300,000 remaining on your home loan, you have home equity worth $400,000.

However, bear in mind that not all of this will be accessible, with lenders only allowing you to borrow 80% of the property's value without being charged for Lender's Mortgage Insurance (LMI).

In other words, to avoid paying LMI, keep your Loan to Valuation Ratio (LVR) below 80%. In this given example, that means:

  • 80% of the property's market value = $560,000 (this is the maximum you can borrow without incurring LMI)
  • Remaining balance on loan = $300,000 (this is the amount you have already borrowed)
  • $560,000 - $300,000 = $260,000

So in this example, the amount of equity you can access without incurring LMI would be $260,000.

Remember, even if you have already paid LMI before, you would still need to pay it again if you try to access equity that exceeds 80% LVR.

Here's how it works. Let's say you want to buy an investment property with a market value of $400,000. There are also additional purchase costs (legal fees, stamp duty and so on) of $20,000, bringing the total cost to $420,000.

Assuming that you meet the loan approval requirements, a lender will fund 80% of the property’s market value - potentially more if you're prepared to pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI). That is, the bank will lend you $320,000 to buy the investment property. As the total cost of the property is $420,000 you still need an additional $100,000 for the deposit and other upfront expenses. This can come from the equity in your existing home.

Let's say the market value of your existing home is $500,000 and the balance of your mortgage is $300,000. The difference between the two is $200,000, which is your home equity.

As an investor you can access up to 80% of your home equity (without the need to take out LMI), which equates to $160,000 in this example. Instead of coming up with a cash deposit for the additional $100,000 needed to buy the investment property, you can take this from the $160,000 of accessible equity in your existing home.

The available equity in your home is calculated at 80% of your home (without the need to take out LMI) less any current loans, which equates to $400,000 less $300,000 = $100,000.

Alternatively some lenders will lend up to 95% of the property value less the existing mortgage, where LMI would be paid on the amount borrowed over 80%.

The way equity works when buying a second home can involve using the available equity in your home as security instead of a usual cash deposit. 

Other common uses other than buying a home, Equity can also be used toward Home Improvements, Car Loans or a holiday, all at Home Loan interest rates, which can be less expensive than using other forms of credit.

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Using Equity to Invest guide

Download our guide on home equity to understand what home equity is and how you could use it to start or expand your investing portfolio.


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Important things to consider when using equity to invest

Many property investment gurus say it’s important to repay the loan on your home as soon as you can. The equity that is drawn down from your home to purchase an investment is tax effective, but any remaining debt on your home isn’t. Therefore the loan on your home costs you much more on an ongoing basis than the loan on your investment property.

The property that you live in is not the only source of home equity. You can also use the equity in an existing investment property to help fund the purchase of another investment property.

Your Mortgage Choice broker can help you to work out how much equity you have in your property and how it can be accessed to fund your investment.

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