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Can I refinance if my value dropped or my LVR is over 80%?

Bayley Clarke · Mortgage broker on the road · Last checked 24 August 2026 · 4 min read

The 42 second version. The rest of this page is the detail underneath it.

How you end up over 80% without borrowing a cent

Your loan to value ratio is just your loan divided by what the property is worth today. The loan side only moves when you pay it down or redraw. The value side moves on its own, and you don't get a vote.

So there are two common ways to find yourself on the wrong side of 80. You bought recently with a smaller deposit and haven't had time to pay much off yet. Or values in your area came back, and a loan that used to sit comfortably under the line got pushed over it while you were making every repayment on time.

Either way, a new lender doesn't care how you got there. They value the property as it stands today, run the ratio, and treat you as the number they see. That is the starting point for everything below.

The two costs that eat the benefit

Lenders mortgage insurance. LMI is a one-off premium that protects the lender if things go wrong, not you, and it doesn't follow you from one lender to the next. Refinance above 80% and the new loan may cop a fresh premium, even if you already paid one when you first bought. Most lenders will let the premium be added to the loan rather than paid upfront, which means you're paying interest on the insurance too. And here's a detail that catches people: some lenders count that premium inside their maximum lending ceiling, others let it sit on top. Two lenders quoting the same maximum can leave genuinely different room to move.

The rate itself. Loans above 80% are often priced higher from an interest rate perspective. The sharpest deals lenders put in the window mostly live under 80. Above it, you sit in a riskier bucket, and the rate you're actually offered reflects that, whatever the advertising says.

Stack those two together and the refinance that looked like a saving can quietly become the opposite. You came to save money and you'd be paying more. So why would you? That is the whole question on this one, and it has to be answered with your numbers, not a headline rate.

The doors that close at 80%

There's a second thing worth knowing, because it changes what's actually on the table. When lenders assess a loan, they test you at a rate well above the one you'd pay, and plenty of people who are stuck on a high rate fail that test even though they're making every repayment. For exactly those people, a number of lenders run gentler refinance assessments: easier tests for a straight swap of the debt you already have.

Here's the catch: almost every one of those gentler assessments stops at 80%. Go above it and the concession disappears at nearly every lender on my panel; I found one banking group where a gentler refinance test and a professional waiver can line up on the same loan, and it comes with a long list of conditions. So above 80% you're generally not negotiating an easier test. You're choosing between paying the insurance and holding a waiver. That's the real shape of it.

The exception worth checking: waivers

Certain banks waive LMI at higher LVRs for certain professions under their professional packages. If your job is on one of those lists, the biggest cost in this whole equation can disappear, and refinancing above 80% can suddenly stack up where it wouldn't for the person next door.

I've now mapped this properly across my panel, and the shape of it is worth knowing. Doctors and dentists get the strongest deals: up to 95% with no insurance at the top end, around 90% at several other lenders. Then there's a wide second tier sitting around 90%: vets, pharmacists, physios, psychologists and optometrists at some lenders, accountants and lawyers at others, and nurses, paramedics and police officers under essential-worker policies at a couple. Some of those waivers carry a minimum income from the qualifying job, roughly in the $80,000 to $120,000 range where one applies.

Two traps inside the fine print. First, the occupation lists don't match from lender to lender. A nurse is flatly excluded at one lender and waived to 90% at another. Same job, opposite answer, and you can't see that from the outside. Second, some waivers only apply when you're buying, not refinancing. The ones that matter for this page are the ones that name refinancing, and plenty do; one will even only do it if you're coming across from another lender.

And if your job isn't on any list: a small number of lenders will still refinance above 80% with no insurance at all, or with a smaller one-off fee in its place, with postcode and product strings attached. So the door isn't locked without a waiver. It's just narrower, and the maths still has to clear the two costs above before moving beats staying.