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I receive Centrelink income. Does it count for a home loan?

Bayley Clarke · Mortgage broker on the road · Last checked 3 September 2026 · 4 min read

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

The payment type decides it

If you're unemployed and getting unemployment benefits, of course the bank isn't going to let you use that when figuring out how much you can borrow. It's not an income they can rely on continuing, and it's designed to stop.

But there are a lot of other types of Centrelink income that the banks will actually use, in addition to other sources of income. The biggest one for a lot of families is Family Tax Benefit A and B. Disability pensions and aged pensions can also be used in some cases. And if you're a single parent receiving child support from your ex and it's been received for a period of time, that income we can generally use as well.

The caveats the banks apply

With Family Tax Benefit it depends on how old your kids are and when those payments are expected to stop. A bank lending over 30 years wants to know the income lasts long enough to matter, so payments tied to a child's age get shaded or cut off at a certain age depending on the lender.

Child support needs a track record and usually a formal arrangement behind it, not a verbal one. Pensions are looked at for permanence. And most banks will only use these payments as a top-up to employment or other income, not as the whole picture.

Where the banks draw the lines

Family Tax Benefit is the one nearly every lender counts, and most count 100% of it, with a couple shading it to 80 or 90%. The catch is your child's age. The cut-offs cluster at about 11, 13 and 15, because the bank wants the payment to keep coming for roughly five more years. A couple of lenders have no age cut-off at all, and one doesn't count it at all. Most also want it to be a top-up, not the main income, and several cap all benefit income together at 40 to 50% of what they'll assess.

Child support is counted by nearly everyone, but often only 80% of it, with three to six months of bank statements showing it landing and, at most lenders, a registered child support assessment behind it. A private arrangement between you and your ex is accepted at only a handful. The age rules are similar to Family Tax Benefit, and a few lenders want the payments to run at least five more years.

The disability and age pensions are accepted at most lenders at 100%, a few exclude them outright, and one big group won't use the age pension at all if the loan is for an investment property. Carer payments are the messy one, because there are two different payments: the Carer Payment is counted at some lenders, and the Carer Allowance is refused at most. JobSeeker, Youth Allowance, Austudy and rent assistance are a no everywhere.

Why the lender choice matters here

Each bank has its own list of which payments it accepts, what percentage of each it counts, and where the age cutoffs sit. Two banks can look at the same family and land on borrowing numbers tens of thousands of dollars apart, purely on how they treat the Centrelink line.

So when these come up in conversation with clients, I make sure the banks will actually support us using that income before we build the application on it. By and large, Centrelink income can often be used. It's just a question of which bank and how much of it. Same job as shift allowances or bonus income: match the income to the lender that counts it.