Buying Before Selling When You Are Self-Employed: How Bridging Works

Self-Employed Home Loans

Buy Before You Sell · Bridging Finance · Alt Doc Income

Buying Before Selling When You Are Self-Employed: How Bridging Works

Almost every guide to buying before you sell is written for a salaried borrower with two payslips and a fixed settlement date. This page is written for the other case: income that has to be evidenced, a deposit that may need to come from equity or business cash, a lender that may test peak debt, end debt or both, and an exit that depends on a sale you do not control.

Published 26 August 2026 / Reviewed 27 August 2026 / Nick Lim, FBAA Accredited Finance Broker / General information only

Quick Answer

Yes. Self-employed borrowers can use bridging finance to buy before selling. The lender will assess the security, your income evidence and the exit, but the servicing basis is not universal: some products focus on end debt, some test the peak position, and some assess both. Before you go unconditional, know which debt figure your lender is testing and what happens if your sale is late or lower than expected.

Also called: buy before you sell, bridging loan, bridging finance, a settlement gap loan.

What this guide answers

1. Can you get bridging finance if you are self-employed?
2. Is the servicing test run on peak debt or on end debt?
3. What income evidence does an alt doc lender accept for a bridge?
4. How much can you actually raise, and what is that percentage measured against?
5. How is your existing home valued, and what if it values under?
6. How long does a home actually take to sell, and how should that set your term?
7. What happens if your home does not sell before the term ends?
8. What are the alternatives to bridging, and which ones work on alt doc income?
9. Is bridging finance regulated, and what do you give up if it is not?
10. What does it cost to own two homes at once?
11. What gets a self-employed buy-before-sell deal declined?
12. Frequently asked questions

Can you get bridging finance if you are self-employed?

Yes. Self-employed borrowers can use bridging finance to buy before selling. What changes is not the basic structure but the proof: the lender has to be comfortable with the security, the debt position it actually services under its policy, and the sale that repays the temporary position. For an alt doc borrower, the practical job is to have current income evidence, a credible sale assumption and the lender's actual servicing method confirmed before the purchase goes unconditional.

Where are you in this already, and what changes because of it?

Most people do not arrive at the start of this. They arrive somewhere in the middle of it, and where they are decides which question is urgent. The rest of this guide is written in order, but you do not have to read it in order.

Where are you in this already, and what should you deal with first?

Where you are	What is actually deciding it	Where to start
Still deciding whether to sell first or buy first	Whether you can carry both positions at all, which is a servicing question before it is a preference	Peak debt or end debt
Looking, nothing signed	Whether your income evidence is assembled and current, because it has the longest lead time of anything here	What income evidence is accepted
Planning to bid at auction	That everything this page says to do before you go unconditional has to be done before you raise your hand	What gets a deal declined
Under contract, finance clause still alive	The date on the clause, and whether the lender has instructed a valuation on your existing home yet	How your home is valued
Already unconditional and the home has not sold	How long a sale actually takes measured against how long you have, and what your contract allows	How long a home takes to sell
A bridge is already running and the term is close	Which of five responses is still open to you, because they close in a particular order	If your home does not sell

The words you arrive with, and the words your file is assessed in

The gap between how this gets described at the kitchen table and how it gets assessed at a credit desk is where most of the confusion on this topic lives. The translation is worth having early, because it changes what you go looking for.

What do the lender's words mean in the words you used to search?

What you said	What the lender calls it	Why the difference matters
I just need something to cover the gap	Peak debt, end debt and the lender's bridge-period servicing basis	The gap is not a small separate loan. It is the whole combined position, for the whole overlap
I will pay it back when the house sells	The exit	An exit is assessed for credibility on evidence, not accepted as an intention
I only need it for a few months	The term, and the end date attached to it	The end date is fixed and the sale date is not, and that difference is the entire risk in the structure
The bank said no	Either the servicing assessment on the combined position, or the income evidence behind it	A decline is usually one of those two, and they have completely different fixes
Whatever is left over after the sale	End debt	It is the loan you live with for years, and it is decided at the start rather than at the end
My accountant does all that	The income evidence set, and the declaration your accountant signs	That signature has the longest lead time and the least control over it of any input on the file

Does your existing mortgage have to move to the bridging lender?

Often, but not always. Many residential bridges are structured by one lender over the existing home and the new purchase, which can mean the current mortgage has to be refinanced or brought into the bridge before or at settlement. Other structures, including some second-ranking or specialist facilities, can sit differently.

If your existing loan has to move, the old lender's payout and discharge become part of the settlement critical path. Ask this before you sign: does the bridge require my existing mortgage to be refinanced, and who is responsible for lodging the discharge? Credit approval does not remove that administrative dependency. The broader timing chain is explained in what actually sets a property-finance settlement timeline.

Can you port your existing home loan instead of refinancing it into the bridge?

Sometimes. Home loan portability, also called a substitution of security or security swap, can let an eligible borrower keep the existing loan while replacing the property that secures it instead of closing that loan and refinancing it into the bridge. It only works where the current lender and loan are eligible and the sale-and-purchase timing fits that lender's process; it is not a substitute for bridging where there is still an unfunded overlap.

One major lender's published portability guidance, read at source on 27 August 2026 and recorded in the fact log below, says an eligible borrower may keep the existing balance, interest rate, repayments and attached features such as an offset while changing the security, and that fixed-rate break costs may be avoided where the security is substituted without other changes to the loan. Those are lender-specific features, not a market rule. If you need to increase the debt, change the structure or carry both homes at once, a fresh credit assessment or a separate bridging structure may still be required. Ask about portability before automatically lodging a discharge, especially if you have a fixed rate or loan features you want to preserve.

Two claims sit on this topic without ever being reconciled. One says bridging is asset-based and the lender looks mainly at the exit. The other says a borrower who cannot prove enough income will fail serviceability. Both can describe real facilities, but neither is a rule for the whole market. A regulated consumer bridge still involves a serviceability assessment, while the debt figure and repayment method used in that assessment vary by product. Some non-bank and private commercial facilities can place more weight on security and the exit, but the regulatory position and protections depend on purpose and structure. The useful question is not whether bridging is "asset-based". It is which facility you are being offered, how it assesses repayment capacity, and which protections apply, which is answered in full further down this page.

The regulator's own definition is deliberately narrow. ASIC's Moneysmart glossary defines bridging finance as "short-term finance that covers the period between buying a new property and selling your existing property" (Moneysmart glossary, entry last updated 1 October 2019, read 26 August 2026). Short-term and defined by a sale are the two load bearing words. Nothing in that definition says the lender stops caring how you service the debt in the meantime.

What makes a self-employed bridge fundable, and what makes it a conversation instead?

What the lender is looking at	Fundable	A conversation rather than an application
The valuation	Every property the lender is relying on as security is acceptable to it, and the valuations required for that structure are complete	The valuation is being ordered after the point at which you could act on it
The income evidence	The income evidence is already assembled and current, not promised for later in the process	The declared income and the business activity statements tell different stories
The accountant	The accountant who has to sign has already agreed to sign	The accountant has not been asked yet, or will not sign
The listing	The existing home is on the market and priced against local comparable evidence	The purchase is already unconditional and the existing home has not been listed
The exit	The exit is a sale with a date attached, not an intention	The exit depends on a price the market has not tested
The term and the contract	There is room in the contract to respond if the valuation lands differently to expectations	The term was chosen from a product page rather than from local selling evidence

One structural point that catches people out: many mainstream residential bridges take both the outgoing and incoming properties as security for one position, but not every bridge does. Current specialist products can also be written on a single-security basis. Ask which property or properties the lender will actually mortgage rather than assuming the structure from the product name. If both homes are tied to one facility, the security release after the sale becomes part of the transaction and it is worth understanding how cross-collateralised structures work before you sign rather than afterwards. Current Connective Bridge product information, for example, expressly lists both multiple- and single-security bridging; that is evidence that the security structure varies, not a recommendation of that product. The way lenders assess business income in the first place is the parent question, covered in the guide to how lenders assess self-employed income.

Sequence one: listed first, unconditional second The existing home goes on the market first, priced against local comparable sales rather than against the number the owner had in mind. The lender's valuation on that home is instructed early, so the figure the whole structure rests on is known before anything is committed. The accountant has already agreed to produce the declaration the alt doc lender needs. Only then does the purchase go unconditional. Nothing in that sequence is expensive or clever. It is just the order, and the order is the whole thing: every input the lender needs is fixed before the borrower loses the ability to respond to any of them.

Is the servicing test run on peak debt or on end debt?

There is no single Australian rule that says bridging serviceability is always run on peak debt or always on end debt. Published lender policies differ: some apply standard lending criteria to the proposed end debt, while others assess both the peak and end positions. That distinction matters more on a self-employed file because the documents may need to support a temporary bridge-period payment as well as the ongoing loan.

Peak debt is the combined debt position while both properties are still held, before any sale proceeds are applied. End debt is what is left once the existing home sells and the proceeds have been paid across. Stated as one line: peak debt is your existing loan balance plus the purchase price of the new property plus purchase and transaction costs plus any interest capitalised during the term, before the sale is applied. End debt is that figure less the net proceeds of the sale. Neither term currently has a glossary entry on this site, so both are defined here in full and neither is used elsewhere on this page as an unexplained shorthand.

That variation is not theoretical. A current published bridging fact sheet states that standard lending criteria applies on the proposed end debt, while a current broker underwriting procedure states that serviceability for the bridge period is assessed on both peak debt and end debt. Neither policy is a rule for the whole market; together they show why the assessment basis has to be confirmed for the actual product.

The prudential layer sits on top of that. Under Attachment C of Prudential Standard APS 220 Credit Risk Management, as reflected in APRA's practice guidance, authorised deposit-taking institutions "must apply a buffer over a loan's interest rate of at least 3.0 per cent, unless determined otherwise by APRA" (APG 223 Residential Mortgage Lending, effective 19 June 2025, read 26 August 2026). Three qualifiers travel with that figure and none of them is optional. It applies to authorised deposit-taking institutions, so it is not a universal rule across every funder you might be offered. It is a supervisory setting APRA reviews and has changed before. And it is never a rate you pay: it is an assessment assumption applied to a rate, not a cost that appears on a statement.

Capitalised interest is the other thing borrowers assume away. On some bridging structures interest during the term is added to the balance rather than paid from cash each month; on others, interest-only payments are required during the bridge. Capitalising does not forgive the interest. It increases peak debt and therefore the security position, and where the lender also tests a bridge-period payment it can affect serviceability as well. The useful question is not whether "both properties" count in some abstract sense. It is what repayment the lender assesses during the overlap, what it assesses on the end debt, and whether your current self-employed evidence supports both where both are tested. Carrying more than one property at once is a live assessment problem in its own right, covered in carrying more than one property.

Peak debt and end debt: which one does the lender assess you on?

Question	Peak debt	End debt
What is it	Your existing loan balance plus the new purchase plus costs plus any capitalised interest, before the sale is applied	What is left once the existing home sells and the net proceeds have been paid across
When does it exist	Only during the overlap, from settlement on the new property until settlement on the sale	From the day the sale settles, and for the rest of the loan term after that
What does the servicing test do with it	Varies by lender: some assess a bridge-period repayment on peak debt, while others use peak debt mainly for exposure and LVR	Usually tested as the ongoing loan; some policies make end debt the main serviceability test, while others assess it alongside peak debt
What happens if the sale runs slow	It can keep growing where interest is capitalised, because interest continues to accrue during the overlap	The forecast end debt also rises if the bridge runs longer or the net sale proceeds fall
What can you actually control	The purchase price, the costs you capitalise, and how long the overlap runs	The sale price achieved, and the structure you refinance the residual into afterwards

What happens on the day the sale settles?

You are left holding the end debt, and that is the loan you live with long after the bridge is a memory. Almost everything written about buying before selling stops at the moment the sale goes through, as though the transaction ends there. It does not. The day the sale settles is a handover, and four separate things change at once.

What changes on the day your existing home settles?

What changes	What happens on the day	What it leaves you deciding
The debt	The net sale proceeds are applied and the combined position becomes the end debt	Whether the end debt is structured the way you would have chosen if you had started here rather than finished here
The pricing	A bridge is priced for a short overlap, and the loan you are left with is not the same thing	Whether and when to refinance off it, which is a conversation to start before settlement, not after
The security	The sold property leaves the picture and the security taken over it has to come off	Whether what remains is still tied to more than one property, and what it takes to untangle that
The assessment	The temporary bridge position falls away and the residual loan continues under the end-loan structure agreed with the lender	Whether the actual sale proceeds still leave the end debt inside the approved ongoing structure
The repayments	The repayment method can change when the bridge ends, depending on how the end debt was set up	Whether the repayment type, offset and loan splits are the ones you want before the first post-sale repayment falls due
The paperwork	Settling a sale and releasing the security over it are two separate steps run by two different parties	Who is chasing each one, and by when, because nobody chases it on your behalf by default

The two decisions that sit on the other side of that day are worth naming now rather than later. Refinancing once the sale settles is part of the same decision as taking the bridge, not a separate one you get to later, and if both properties were taken as security for one position then untangling a cross-collateralised structure is the job that outlives the transaction.

What income evidence does an alt doc lender accept for a bridge?

Common alt doc evidence includes business activity statements, business bank statements, an accountant's declaration and, in some structures, a notice of assessment or other corroborating document. A bridge does not create a new evidence category; it changes what that evidence has to support and how current it must be when the lender makes the final decision.

The alt doc evidence set, and what a bridge does to it

• BASBusiness activity statements, read as a trading profile across recent quarters rather than as a single figure. On a bridge the quarters have to still be current when the bridge is assessed. Basis: general alt doc lender evidence practice, described generically with no lender named, as at August 2026
• Sign-offAn accountant's declaration of income. On a bridge, get the agreement to sign before the purchase goes unconditional, not after, because it is the input with the longest lead time and the least control over it. Basis: general alt doc lender evidence practice, described generically with no lender named, as at August 2026
• StatementsBusiness bank statements, read for whether the declared income and the money actually moving through the account tell the same story. A bridge does not change what is read, it changes how much has to reconcile. Basis: general alt doc lender evidence practice, described generically with no lender named, as at August 2026
• NoticeA notice of assessment, where the structure and the lender call for it, as the corroborating document behind the declared position rather than as the position itself. Basis: general alt doc lender evidence practice, described generically with no lender named, as at August 2026

General information only. These are document classes described generically, not one lender's policy and not a checklist you can self-assess against. Which documents are accepted, and in what combination, varies by lender and by structure at the time of application. Not financial advice.

Here is the part that only matters on a bridge. The evidence has to support the debt position the product actually services: end debt, peak debt, or both. A pack sized only to the residual loan can still miss a product that tests a bridge-period payment; a pack sized only to the temporary peak can still fail if the ongoing end debt does not service. The second difference is timing. The evidence has to be current at the point the bridge is finally assessed, not merely when the purchase was first discussed. A quarter can turn over between those dates, and when it does, the pack that supported the pre-approval may no longer be the pack the assessor needs.

Can a bridging pre-approval change before settlement?

Yes. Pre-approval or conditional approval is not the same as unconditional approval. If your financial position changes, the property valuation changes, conditions remain outstanding, or the income evidence ages into a new reporting period, the final result can change. For a self-employed borrower, a new BAS quarter, softer trading or an accountant who will no longer sign can matter even when the original pre-approval looked comfortable.

Do not treat pre-approval as auction permission by itself. Before you bid or let a finance clause expire, confirm what remains conditional and whether the lender needs refreshed self-employed evidence. If your timing crosses a BAS or financial-year boundary, how the BAS cycle changes the income window is the adjacent read.

How many years of trading, what age of Australian Business Number, and how a particular lender treats add-backs are all parent-level questions that vary by lender and by structure, and they are answered in the self-employed home loans guide rather than repeated here. If your existing lending sits with a non-bank, the shape of those options is set out in non-bank alt doc options, and the term itself is defined in the glossary entry for alt doc lending.

How much can you actually raise, and what is that percentage measured against?

There is no single portable bridging percentage because lenders quote limits against different bases: the value of the new property, the combined security value, the peak debt or another product-specific calculation. Two pages can quote different percentages and both can be correct because the denominator is different.

Set out plainly, the four bases in circulation are these. A major lender's published material measures the percentage against the value of the new property alone. A second, from the broker-facing tier, measures it against the combined value of both properties. A third quotes a higher percentage measured against the purchase price, plus costs on top. A fourth, which is how prudential thinking actually works, expresses it as peak debt over the combined value of both securities. Run one file through all four and you get four different maximum loans. That is why a number lifted from a comparison page is not portable, and why the only reliable way through is to derive it in order rather than to look it up.

What is a bridging percentage actually measured against?

Where the figure comes from	What the percentage is measured against
A major lender's published material	The value of the new property alone
The broker-facing tier	The combined value of both properties
A higher percentage quoted elsewhere	The purchase price, plus costs on top
How prudential thinking actually works	Peak debt over the combined value of both securities

Where does the deposit come from before your home has sold?

It comes from somewhere other than the sale, because the sale has not happened yet. This is the question that arrives first in real life and last in most writing on the subject: the contract deposit is payable when you sign, which is weeks or months before any sale proceeds exist, and it is a separate problem from the loan that funds settlement.

Where can the deposit come from before your existing home has sold?

Where it comes from	What it needs from you	What it does not solve
Cash you already hold	Nothing beyond having it available in cleared funds by the date the contract requires it	It does not reduce the peak debt. It changes which pocket the money came from, not the size of the position
Equity released against the existing home before you sign	A facility arranged in advance, and full servicing on the increased position for as long as it runs	It adds ongoing debt to the file before the bridge is even assessed, and the assessment sees it
A deposit bond	An assessment by the bond provider, and on longer bonds evidence of the funds that will settle	It defers the deposit, not the settlement. The full amount still has to be there on the day
Money from the business	The lender being satisfied about where the money came from and whether the business could spare it	It can raise questions about the same trading position your income evidence is being read for
A smaller deposit, agreed with the vendor	A vendor who will accept it, agreed before you sign rather than asked for afterwards	It is a contract term, so it is a conversation with your solicitor and the agent, not with a lender

No amount is stated here because the deposit is set by your contract, not by a lender or by a convention, and where the money comes from changes how the rest of the file reads. Where the cash at the top comes from covers how business funds are treated when they are used for this purpose, and releasing equity without selling covers the route that raises it against the home you still own.

The contract deposit is not the same thing as cash to complete. At settlement you can still have transfer duty, legal and conveyancing costs, settlement adjustments, lender or valuation costs and any gap between the approved loan and the amount required to complete. Some structures can fund part of those costs where equity and policy allow; others require cash. Ask for a settlement funds worksheet before you commit, especially if any contribution is coming out of the business, because cash removed from the business can be relevant to the same trading position being used to evidence income.

The five steps a lender actually works through

1. What the lender values. Not what you paid, not what the agent said, and not what the contract says. The lender instructs the valuations required for the security structure it is actually taking. In a mainstream two-property bridge that commonly means both homes; in a single-security structure it may not. The lender's own security values are the inputs to everything that follows.
2. What it counts as debt. The balance still owing on your existing home, plus the new purchase and transaction costs, plus bridge-period interest where that product capitalises it. That produces the peak debt; the expected net sale proceeds are then applied to derive the end debt.
3. What it counts as costs. Transfer duty, legal and conveyancing costs, lender fees, valuation fees and adjustments. Some lenders let a portion of these sit inside the facility and some do not, and that single policy difference moves the answer more than the headline percentage does.
4. What percentage it applies, and to which of those numbers. This is the step the four sources disagree about. The percentage is meaningless until you know its denominator, so the question to ask a lender is not how much, it is against what.
5. What has to be found in cash at the top. Whatever the facility will not carry has to come from you, at settlement, in cleared funds. This is the number that decides whether the deal happens, and it is the last one anybody calculates.

APRA's guidance touches step four from the lender's side rather than yours. APRA "has not formally defined 'high LVR lending', but experience shows that LVRs above 90 per cent (including capitalised LMI premium or other fees) clearly expose an ADI to a higher risk of loss" (APG 223 Residential Mortgage Lending, effective 19 June 2025, read 26 August 2026). Read that for what it is: guidance to lenders about their own risk appetite, not a promise about what you can access. It does not set a borrower limit, it does not create an entitlement below that level, and it says nothing at all about bridging specifically. The loan to value ratio glossary entry covers how the ratio itself is constructed.

Lenders mortgage insurance may apply to a bridging structure, and where it does it is quoted per file against your particular figures and your particular lender's policy. No published premium, threshold or waiver figure is stated on this page, because none exists that would be accurate for your file. Where the cash at the top comes from is its own question on a self-employed file, and where the cash at the top comes from covers how lenders treat business funds used for that purpose.

How is your existing home valued, and what if it values under?

The lender instructs its own valuation on your existing home, and that number, not the agent's appraisal and not the price you hoped for, is what the entire structure is built on. Every figure downstream of it, peak debt, the percentage, the cash you have to find at settlement, moves when it moves.

A valuation for mortgage purposes is a defined professional exercise rather than an opinion of what a home might fetch. The Australian Property Institute's guidance paper on valuations for mortgage and loan security purposes states that "the primary role for Members is to advise the market value of the asset(s) for mortgage and loan security purposes", and separately requires valuers to comment on any difference between their value and the sale price (ANZVGP 112, Valuations for Mortgage and Loan Security Purposes, effective 1 January 2025, read 26 August 2026, sections 3.0 and 5.6). The practical translation is that a market value assessed to a professional standard and a marketing appraisal produced to win a listing are two different documents with two different purposes, and a lender only funds against the first.

The sequencing point is the one worth acting on. A valuation instructed after the purchase has already gone unconditional gives you no room to respond to it. In practice that is where a buy-before-sell file quietly turns from a structuring exercise into a cash-finding exercise: the number lands lower than assumed, the percentage is applied to a smaller base, the gap has to be closed at settlement, and the borrower has already surrendered every lever that could have closed it. Instruct the valuation on your existing home while you still have a finance clause, a cooling-off period, or an unsigned contract.

Can you challenge it? You can ask for it to be reviewed, and the thing that moves a review is evidence rather than disagreement: comparable sales the valuer did not have, a factual error about the property itself, or work completed that was not reflected. An agent's appraisal is not that evidence, because it is a different document produced for a different purpose. Whether a review is available at all, and whether a second valuation can be instructed, is a matter of the lender's own policy rather than a right you hold.

What to do when the number lands short is its own decision tree, and it is covered separately in when the valuation lands short rather than answered twice. No valuation cost figure appears on this page, because no credible published source for one was found.

How long does a home actually take to sell, and how should that set your term?

The number most people use to set a bridging term is the marketing period, and the marketing period is one phase out of four. That is the correction this section exists to make. A term set to cover the campaign will be short by the length of everything either side of it, and the borrower does not discover the shortfall until the point at which it is expensive.

The four phases between listing and settled funds

• OnePreparation. Presentation, photography, any works you decide to do, agent selection and the pricing conversation. It happens before the campaign starts and it is invisible in every days on market figure ever published. Basis: transaction sequence, not a published statistic, as at August 2026
• TwoActive campaign and days on market. Homes took a median 35 days to sell over the three months to July. That is a national median for the marketing period only, not the time from listing to settlement, and half of all sales sat on the slower side of it. Source: Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, published 14 August 2026, read 26 August 2026
• ThreeContract and cooling off. In New South Wales, buyers have a 5 business day cooling-off period after contracts are exchanged. Cooling-off rules, and the exceptions to them, differ in every state and territory and yours must be confirmed rather than assumed. Source: New South Wales Government, contracts and deposits, page updated 22 September 2025, read 26 August 2026
• FourThe settlement period. In New South Wales settlement usually takes place around 6 weeks after contracts are exchanged. In Queensland it is most commonly 4 to 6 weeks after both parties sign, mostly falling within a range of 30 to 90 days. Electronic settlement runs Monday to Friday only, with closing times that differ by state and territory and public holiday exclusions, so a settlement cannot simply be pushed into a weekend to make a term fit. Sources: New South Wales Government, updated 22 September 2025; Queensland Government, updated 3 November 2020; PEXA hours of operation. All read 26 August 2026

General information only. The figures above are medians and conventional periods, not entitlements or predictions, and each is stated with the source, the period it covers and its limits alongside it. Two states are named in full because they are the two with published conventional settlement periods; every other state and territory must be confirmed for your own transaction. Not financial advice.

The national median is the wrong input for an individual decision, and the same data provider's own numbers show why. In its April 2026 chart pack, Cotality put the national median time on market at 30 days for the quarter, but reported Perth selling in a median of nine days while Darwin sat at 47 and Canberra at 43 (Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, April 2026, published 10 April 2026, read 26 August 2026). The fastest and the slowest capital city differ by roughly a factor of five on the marketing period alone. Those are capital city medians for one quarter, not forecasts, and half of all sales in any market sit on the slower side of a median by definition. The point is not the individual figures. It is that averaging across markets that far apart produces a number that describes none of them, including yours.

Some figures you will see quoted for individual capital cities are not sourced to the data provider at all. The current search panel on this topic attributes a set of capital city day counts to a social media post, and those numbers disagree with the published chart pack. They are not used here.

What is the difference between an open and closed bridging loan?

A closed bridge generally means the existing home is already under an unconditional sale contract with a known settlement date. An open bridge generally means the home has not sold yet, so the timing and amount of the exit are still uncertain. Open versus closed describes the certainty of the sale exit; it is not the same thing as whether you will have end debt after the sale. How that extra uncertainty changes approval, term or pricing depends on the lender.

The term is a decision you make against local evidence, not a product fact you accept. The inputs are your suburb rather than the nation, your property type, the season you are selling into, the settlement period that is conventional in your state, and how much of the four-phase timeline is already behind you. If the settlement side of the timeline is the binding constraint, what actually sets a settlement timeline goes deeper, and if you are buying into a short settlement, buying on a short settlement covers that case directly.

Sequence two: unconditional first, listed second The purchase happens at auction, which means unconditional on the fall of the hammer with no finance clause and no cooling off. The existing home goes to market afterwards. The bridging term was set from a product brochure rather than from what comparable homes in that suburb have actually taken to sell. Preparation eats a fortnight before the campaign even starts, the campaign runs longer than the national median because the local market is not the national market, and then the contract and settlement phases have to fit inside what is left. The decision point arrives well before the term does: whether to reprice now, while there is still runway, or hold the price and spend the runway. That is the choice, and it is a better one to make early than late.

What happens if your home does not sell before the term ends?

If the term ends before the sale settles, the bridge has missed the exit it was approved around. It does not automatically become a normal home loan. The lender may consider an extension, variation, refinance or sale strategy, and the loan documents govern what rights, fees or default consequences arise if no new arrangement is agreed.

Act before the end date. A lender considering an extension or restructure may ask for updated sale evidence, a valuation and current serviceability or income evidence; exactly what is retested varies by facility. On an alt doc file, a new BAS quarter, changed bank-statement pattern or fresh accountant declaration can therefore matter at the same moment your sale options are narrowing. That is why the useful trigger is not "the term has expired". It is "there is not enough term left for another realistic sale campaign".

What are your options if the home has not sold and the term is running out?

Response	What it requires	What it costs you	When it is realistic	Who decides
Ask for an extension	A lender willing to extend, and usually a current valuation and a fresh look at your position	More interest across a longer overlap, likely fees, and a reassessment you may not pass	Where the sale is genuinely close and there is evidence for it, and where you asked early	The lender, on its own credit judgement
Refinance the whole position	A new lender prepared to take on the combined debt, and income evidence that supports it now	The full cost of a new facility, and pricing set by the pressure you are under rather than by choice	Where the income evidence has held up and there is real equity behind the position	The incoming lender, and your own tolerance for the price
Reprice the existing home	Agent advice against current local evidence, and a decision you are willing to make quickly	Sale proceeds, which flow straight through to a larger end debt	Earlier than most people do it, while there is still term left to run a repriced campaign	You, on advice, and it is the decision you keep the longest
Keep it and rent it out	A tenant, a lender that will assess the position with rental income, and your accountant's input first	A converted exit, a fresh assessment on the full position, and a different tax clock starting	Where the property rents well and the combined position can be serviced ongoing	You and your accountant, then the lender on the reassessment
Sell under time pressure	Nothing except a decision, which is exactly why it is the outcome to design against	The gap between the price a market would have paid and the price a deadline pays	It is not a plan, it is what is left when the earlier options were not taken	The circumstances, by then, rather than you

What if your home sells for less than the bridge was based on?

The shortfall flows into the residual debt. If the net sale proceeds are lower than the amount used in the bridge model, the end debt is higher by the same shortfall before allowing for any additional interest or settlement adjustments. A lower sale price does not automatically stop the sale, but it can change the ongoing loan, the cash you need to contribute or whether the lender needs to approve a variation. Current published bridging guidance explicitly warns that market movements can change the sale price and therefore the ongoing loan.

This is why the sale assumption should be stress-tested before you buy. Put three numbers beside the property: the agent's expected price, a conservative downside price, and the lender's own assessed value. The structure should still be understandable at the downside number, not only at the number that makes the purchase work.

Can you keep your old home and rent it out instead of selling after taking bridging finance?

Sometimes, but it is a new credit decision rather than a simple continuation of the original bridge. If you keep the existing home and rent it out, you have converted your exit: the sale that was going to repay the facility is no longer happening, so the lender is assessing an ongoing position with rental income in it rather than a temporary one. It also starts a different tax clock. The Australian Taxation Office's absence rule lets you choose to treat a former home as your main residence for up to 6 years after you stop living in it if it is used to produce income, and for an unlimited period if it is not (ato.gov.au, treating a former home as your main residence, page updated 22 June 2026, read 26 August 2026). That is a choice with conditions and consequences, only one dwelling can be your main residence at a time except in the limited overlap case, and it is your accountant's call rather than your broker's.

Enforcement mechanics are not covered here at length. The direction of travel, if nothing changes and nothing is refinanced, is toward the lender exercising its rights over the security it holds, and how these instruments actually work is set out in the bridging, caveat and second mortgage guide. What matters more is the timing of the conversation. The options above narrow in order, and every one of them is wider sixty days before the end date than sixty days after it. If settlement itself is the problem rather than the sale, if settlement itself is the problem covers that case. If the sale has settled and you are looking at what the residual position should become, refinancing once the sale settles is the next read.

Sequence three: the home does not sell and the plan changes The campaign runs, the offers do not come at the price, and the term is closer than the sale. The borrower keeps the existing home and rents it. That single decision does three things at once: it converts the exit from a sale into an ongoing position, it triggers a fresh assessment on the end position with rental income now in the calculation and the full combined debt on the other side, and it starts the absence rule clock described above, with its own conditions and its own limits. None of those three is a disaster on its own. Together they are a different transaction to the one that was approved, and the accountant needs to be in the room before it is chosen rather than after.

What if it is the purchase you cannot settle, not the sale?

That is a contract problem before it is a finance problem, and it goes to your solicitor first. The two failures get run together in most writing on this topic and they are not the same event. A bridging term ending is a facility reaching its end date. A settlement date missed on the property you are buying is a breach of a contract you signed, and what follows from it is written in that contract rather than set by a lender.

Who decides what, if a settlement date is going to be missed?

The question	Who decides it	Where the answer actually lives
Whether you are late at all, and from when	The contract	The settlement date and any allowance the contract makes around it, which your solicitor reads for you
What being late costs	The contract	Whatever it provides for a late settlement. This differs between contracts and between states and territories, and it is never safe to assume
Whether the other side can force the issue	The contract, and then the general law	Its notice provisions, and what a notice would require you to do and by when
What happens to the deposit you have already paid	The contract	Its provisions about the deposit, which is the clearest reason this is a solicitor conversation and not a broker one
Whether more time can be bought	The vendor first, then your lender	A negotiation, and then whether your lender can actually fund on the new date once one is agreed
Whether a different facility can settle it instead	A lender, on its own credit judgement	The alternatives set out in the next section, read with the price of the fastest of them in front of you

The order of that table is deliberate: the rows near the top are cheaper than the rows near the bottom, and they are also the ones that stop being available first. None of it is legal advice and none of it can be read off a web page. Your contract governs, and the person to ask is your solicitor or conveyancer, before a date is missed rather than after it. On the one item borrowers most often want a number for, what late settlement actually costs goes through it properly.

What are the alternatives to bridging, and which ones work on alt doc income?

There are several ways to buy before you sell, and for a self-employed borrower the question that matters is not which is cheapest. It is which ones survive contact with alt doc income. Cost comparisons are already everywhere and they are written for a borrower whose income is a payslip. The axis below is the one that actually changes the answer for you.

Which buy-before-sell routes actually work when your income is alt doc?

Route	What it needs from you	How your income gets assessed	Where it strains on alt doc	Read more
Bridging finance	A security structure the lender accepts, often both homes in a mainstream bridge, while some specialist products use one security, plus the required valuation or valuations and an exit you can evidence	The lender's bridge-period and end-debt method, which may test peak debt, end debt or both	The evidence has to be current and sized to the debt position that particular product actually services	Bridging, caveat or second mortgage
A deposit bond	An assessment by the bond provider, and on longer bonds, evidence or security behind the completion funds	Assessed by the bond provider for the deposit only, not by a lender for the whole purchase	It defers the deposit, not the settlement, so the full servicing question still arrives on the day	No separate guide on this site
A subject-to-sale offer	A vendor willing to accept a contract condition tied to the sale of your existing property, drafted and checked before you sign	The lender assesses the debt that will actually exist at settlement; if the old home settles first or the settlements align, a bridge period may be avoided	It can reduce the finance strain, but it shifts risk into the contract because the vendor may prefer an unconditional buyer	Contract condition, so confirm the wording and effect with your solicitor or conveyancer
A longer or simultaneous settlement negotiated in the contract	A vendor who will agree, and the agreement has to be reached before the contract is signed	One loan, assessed once, on the end position only	The least strain of any route here, and the least available, because it depends on the other side agreeing	Buying on a short settlement
Equity release against the existing home	Enough value in the existing home behind the current debt, and a lender willing to release against it	Full servicing on the increased position, for as long as the release is outstanding	It adds ongoing debt to an alt doc file with no sale date attached to retire it	Releasing equity without selling
A second mortgage or caveat-backed short-term facility	Consent or accommodation from the first mortgagee, and equity sitting behind that first position	Weighted heavily to security and to the exit, with a lighter income assessment on many facilities	The lighter assessment is the thing you are paying for, in price and in the protections set out above	How a second mortgage sits behind a first
Selling first and renting back	A vendor and buyer arrangement or a rental in between, and a willingness to move twice	One loan, assessed once, with no second position to carry at all	It removes the servicing problem entirely and creates a housing and timing problem instead	No separate guide on this site

A subject-to-sale offer is a contract solution, not a loan. In Victoria, Consumer Affairs Victoria expressly lists the sale of an existing property as a condition that can be negotiated in a private-sale contract, while an auction purchase cannot simply be made conditional after the bid is won. Other states and territories, and the exact wording and deadlines in your contract, need to be checked by your solicitor or conveyancer. If the condition lets your existing sale complete before or at the new purchase settlement, it can remove or shorten the period in which both debts overlap; the trade-off is that the vendor has to accept the uncertainty. See Consumer Affairs Victoria's current private-sale guidance for that jurisdiction.

Two of those routes carry a qualification the table cannot hold. A deposit bond solves the deposit and not the settlement: it buys you time at exchange, and the full purchase price still has to be funded on the day. And selling first and renting back is the only route on the list that removes the servicing problem entirely, by removing the second position, which is why it is on the table despite being the option nobody wants to hear. The three routes with live guides are covered in more depth in releasing equity without selling, how a second mortgage sits behind a first, and caveat-backed short-term funding. No cost, rate or fee figure for any route appears above, deliberately: pricing on these varies by lender, by security position and by term, and a published number would be wrong for most readers on the day they read it.

Is bridging finance regulated, and what do you give up if it is not?

Bridging finance can fall inside or outside the National Credit Code depending on the borrower, the purpose of the credit and the structure of the facility. Purpose matters, but it is not a switch that automatically turns regulation off.

ASIC sets out two limbs. The debtor test: the National Credit Code applies where "the debtor is a natural person or strata corporation". The purpose test: the credit must be provided for "personal, domestic or household purposes, or to purchase, renovate or improve residential property for investment purposes, or to refinance credit previously provided for this purpose" (ASIC, National Credit Code, page last updated 1 August 2025, read 26 August 2026). Read the purpose limb carefully, because it defeats the most common misreading on this topic: residential property acquired for investment purposes is inside the Code, not outside it. A natural person borrowing to buy a residential investment property is not standing outside consumer credit regulation by virtue of calling it an investment.

The wedge is elsewhere, and it needs stating precisely. ASIC's own page records that the Code does not apply to certain loans, including "low-cost, short-term credit (less than 62 days)". The low-cost condition and the day count are a single carve-out and they travel together. A facility that runs for under 62 days but is not low cost is not carved out by being short. It is worth being blunt about the inversion, because it is everywhere: writing that a short-term facility is unregulated because it is under 62 days states the exemption with its operative condition removed.

The difference between a facility inside the Code and one outside it is not paperwork, and it is worth seeing side by side before anyone offers you a choice between them.

What do you have inside the National Credit Code that you do not have outside it?

What is at stake	Inside the Code, what you have	Outside the Code, what is not there
Assessment before the credit is provided	Responsible lending obligations on the credit provider before the credit is offered	No statutory responsible lending assessment before the credit is provided
Disclosure and contract form	Prescribed pre-contractual disclosure and a credit contract in a required form	No prescribed pre-contractual disclosure regime
Hardship	A statutory hardship pathway, with an obligation on the lender to respond to a hardship notice	No statutory hardship notice mechanism, only whatever the contract itself provides
Complaints and external dispute resolution	Access to external dispute resolution through the Australian Financial Complaints Authority	Complaint rights depend on the provider's own membership and the nature of the complaint
Remedies	Regulated remedies where the contract is found to be unsuitable	Remedies come from the contract and general law rather than from the credit legislation

Two points sit either side of that table. Inside the Code, the credit provider must hold an Australian credit licence or be an authorised representative. Outside it, the protections you are giving up are the whole of the difference in price.

Two live constraints sit on top of that, and both cut against the easy reading. First, a business purpose declaration is not a shield you can rely on. In a 2025 Federal Court decision, the Court found that the respondents "could not simply rely on the 'Business Purpose Declaration'" and instead "had to undertake reasonable inquiries about the purpose for which the credit was provided", and that such declarations are "ineffective including where a credit provider would have known, if they had made reasonable inquiries about the credit purpose, that the credit was in fact to be applied for personal use" (ASIC media release 25-060MR, 16 April 2025, read 26 August 2026). If a facility is being structured as business purpose to move a residential transaction outside the Code, that is exactly the fact pattern the Court was looking at.

Second, and this one cuts against the borrower, external dispute resolution does not reach every decision. AFCA's own material lists among the complaints it cannot consider "a financial firm's assessment of the credit risk posed by a borrower (with exceptions in cases of irresponsible lending or financial hardship)" (AFCA, how we resolve complaints and our Rules, Section C of the Rules, read 26 August 2026). Being inside the Code does not give you a right of review over a lender's commercial credit judgement. It gives you conduct protections, disclosure, a hardship pathway and a forum for the things that forum can hear. Those are worth a great deal and they are not the same as an appeal. If a facility outside the Code is genuinely the right structure for a commercial transaction, private and non-bank lending sets out what that market is and how it is priced. The point of this section is that it should be a decision taken with the trade in front of you, not a description you accept because it appeared in a product name.

What does it cost to own two homes at once?

During the overlap you can carry two sets of property holding costs plus the financing costs of the bridge. The payment timing varies by product: some facilities require interest-only payments during the bridge, while others capitalise interest into the balance. Separate what the bridge costs from when cash actually leaves your account.

What does the bridging facility itself cost, and when do you pay it?

A bridging facility can involve interest, valuation, establishment and legal work, security release or discharge costs, and extension costs if the term changes. Some are paid upfront, some at settlement, some may be capitalised, and some only arise if the plan changes. Do not assume the whole cost waits until the sale.

What are you actually paying for on a bridging facility, and when does it fall due?

What you are paying for	When it falls due	What decides how big it is
Interest for the overlap	Either paid during the bridge or capitalised into the balance and cleared or reduced at sale, depending on the product	The size of the peak debt and how many days the overlap actually runs, which is the sale date rather than the date you hoped for
The valuation on your existing home	Early, before the structure can be confirmed	The property and the type of valuation instructed. No figure is published here because no credible published source for one was found
Establishment and the legal work on the facility	At settlement of the purchase	The lender and the complexity of the security position, which is why two properties costs more to document than one
Releasing the security when the sale settles	At settlement of the sale, at the other end	How many securities are being released and whether the remaining position has to be restructured
Any extension of the term	Only if the sale runs past the end date	The lender's judgement at the time, on a file that now has a slow sale on it. This is the cost that is invisible when the term is chosen and decisive when it is missed

Capitalised interest is worth understanding separately from interest-only repayments. Where a product capitalises interest, the interest is added to what you owe instead of being paid from cash each month. Nothing is forgiven: the balance grows, and the peak-debt model needs to allow for the interest expected to be added over the assumed overlap. If the sale takes longer than modelled, more interest is added before the sale proceeds are applied, increasing the residual debt. Other bridging products require interest-only payments during the bridge instead, so compare both the total cost and the cash-flow timing.

The obvious half first, without figures, because the figures are yours rather than general: two sets of council rates, two building insurance policies, two lots of utilities and standing charges, maintenance and presentation on a home you are trying to sell while living somewhere else, body corporate or strata levies where they apply, and interest running on both positions for the whole overlap whether it is paid monthly or capitalised into the balance.

Two clocks running on one transaction

• TwoTwo of everything, for the whole overlap. Rates, insurance, utilities, maintenance and presentation, levies where they apply, and interest on both positions whether it is paid monthly or capitalised into the balance. No general figure is given here because the figures are yours. Basis: holding costs described generically, no published figure claimed, as at August 2026
• Six monthsThe overlap window. If you acquire a new home before you dispose of your old one, you can treat both as your main residence for up to 6 months, but only if all three conditions are met: you lived in your old home as your main residence for a continuous period of at least 3 months in the 12 months before you disposed of it, you did not use it to produce income in any part of that 12 months when it was not your main residence, and the new property becomes your main residence. Source: Australian Taxation Office, moving to a new main residence, page updated 22 June 2026, read 26 August 2026
• Six yearsThe absence rule, if the plan changes. If you stop living in your former home and use it to produce income, you can choose to treat it as your main residence for up to 6 years after you stop living in it. If it is not used to produce income, you can treat it as your main residence for an unlimited period. Only one dwelling can be your main residence at a time, outside the limited overlap above. Source: Australian Taxation Office, treating a former home as your main residence, page updated 22 June 2026, read 26 August 2026

General information only, and not tax advice. The wording above is the Australian Taxation Office's own, with the as-of date of the page it was read from alongside it. Whether any of it applies to your transaction is a question for your accountant, who should see your dates before a bridging term is agreed. Not financial advice.

Here is the join that none of the pages competing on this topic make. The capital gains overlap window and the bridging term are two clocks running on one transaction, and they are not the same length, they do not start on the same day, and neither one adjusts itself to the other. A term negotiated without reference to the tax window can run past it. The consequence is not a fee or a penalty. It is that a portion of the gain on the old home may stop being covered by the exemption for the period beyond the window, which is a materially different kind of cost to a higher interest rate and it lands at a completely different time. Anyone setting a bridging term should know where the tax window sits before the term is agreed, and almost nobody does, because the broker is looking at the loan and the accountant has not been shown the loan yet.

Two more items sit in the same overlap and both route out. Land tax is assessed by each state and territory revenue office on land held at a particular date each year, so holding two properties across that date can bring a liability that would not otherwise have arisen, depending on the jurisdiction, the values and what exemptions apply to you. Transfer duty falls at the new purchase, on the timetable and at the rates set by the jurisdiction the property is in. No rate, threshold or concession for either is stated on this page, and there is no state-by-state table here, because both change on their own schedules and the only reliable answer is the one your own state or territory revenue office gives for your transaction. Where a jurisdiction is named on this page, it is named in full, and where a rule is stated for one jurisdiction, the others have to be confirmed rather than assumed.

This section states the rule and routes out, and it should be read that way. Capital gains tax on a main residence is your accountant's work, not a broker's, and this page does not attempt to out-explain them on it. Take the overlap window, the absence rule and your own dates to your accountant before you set a bridging term, not after. If the underlying question is whether to sell the old home at all, whether to sell or borrow against it works through that decision.

What gets a self-employed buy-before-sell deal declined?

Common failure points are insufficient or stale income evidence, a serviceability failure under that product's assessment method, a valuation or LVR problem, an exit that does not withstand scrutiny, and going unconditional before those pieces are resolved. Sequence matters because several of those problems are fixable before the contract hardens and expensive after it.

From our broking, indicative

What follows is qualitative on purpose. This is a decision people make under time pressure, with a home and a deadline attached, so no indicative rate, band, ratio or approval time is published here. What we can say is what recurs.

What makes a self-employed bridge land:

• The existing home already listed and priced against local evidence before the purchase goes unconditional
• The valuation on the existing home instructed early rather than after the fact
• An accountant who has already agreed to sign
• A business activity statement profile that reconciles to the declared income
• A purchase contract that still has a finance clause in it
• A term chosen from local selling evidence rather than from a product brochure

What gets them declined:

• An existing home that has been on the market too long at the wrong price
• An accountant who will not sign
• A declared income the activity statements contradict
• An unconditional contract with no cooling off and no finance clause
• A valuation instructed too late to respond to
• A plan that assumes the marketing period is the selling period

What changes in the last sixty days of a term: the conversation moves from selling the property to managing the facility, and the options narrow in a specific order.

Indicative only, drawn from files we have placed, and qualitative by choice on this topic. It is not a quote, not an offer, and not a prediction about your file. Actual outcomes depend on lender policy and on your circumstances at the time of application. General information only, not financial advice.

What changes if you are bidding at auction?

Everything on this page that has to happen before you go unconditional has to happen before you raise your hand. An auction contract is ordinarily unconditional when the hammer falls, and whether any cooling-off period applies to your particular contract is a question for your solicitor before the auction rather than after it. Either way the practical position is the same, and it is unforgiving: there is no finance clause to fall back on, so the income evidence, the accountant's agreement, the valuation on your existing home and the assessment of the combined position all have to be settled in advance. A borrower who bids while any of those four is still open is not buying subject to finance. They are buying, and hoping.

The same applies in a softer form to any contract you sign without a finance clause, and to a clause that expires before your existing home has had a proper campaign. If you are in either position now, what happens if a settlement date is missed is the section to read next, with your solicitor rather than instead of one.

The first week: what to do, and in what order

The order matters more than the speed, because the inputs with the longest lead times are the ones almost everybody starts last. Nothing in this list is expensive. Every one of them is expensive to leave until the point at which you need it to already be done.

What should you do first, and what does leaving it late actually cost you?

The move	Why it sits here in the order	What leaving it late costs you
Ask your accountant whether they will sign, and by when	It is the input with the longest lead time and the least control over it	A file that is ready except for the one signature it cannot get
Assemble the income evidence and check it is still current	It has to be current when the bridge is assessed, not when you decided to buy	Quarters that have gone stale by the time anyone reads the file
Get pricing evidence on your existing home from local comparable sales	It sets both the term and the exit the whole structure rests on	A term chosen from a product page and an exit priced on hope
Have your solicitor read the contract before you sign it, or read the one you signed	The contract decides the dates, the conditions and what happens if a date is missed	Finding out what the contract says at the point where it has become expensive
Get the lender's valuation on your existing home instructed as early as the process allows	Every figure downstream of it is built on it	A valuation that arrives after the point at which you could still have acted on it
Confirm the bridge-period and end-debt servicing basis before the purchase goes unconditional	The lender may test peak debt, end debt or both, and you need to know which payment your income evidence must support	An unconditional contract sitting on an assessment assumption that turns out to be wrong

None of that is a scoring system and none of it is a promise. It is what recurs, from the underwriter's seat, on this particular kind of file. If your position is somewhere in the list on the right, that is a conversation to have now rather than after a contract goes unconditional, and the structure that follows the sale is worth designing at the same time as the bridge that precedes it. The residual position on a self-employed file usually lands as a one doc home loan, and it is a better loan when it was planned at the start of the transaction rather than assembled at the end of one.

Buying before selling can work for self-employed borrowers, but the decision is only as good as three assumptions: which debt position the lender actually services, whether your current income evidence supports that method, and what happens if the sale is later or lower than the model. Confirm whether the product tests peak debt, end debt or both, use a conservative sale outcome, set the term from local selling evidence and plan the residual loan before the purchase goes unconditional.

Key takeaway: confirm the lender's servicing basis, model a lower sale outcome, and make sure current self-employed evidence supports the resulting position before you go unconditional.

Talk to a BrokerCheck Eligibility

Self-Employed Home LoansOne Doc Home LoanBridging, Caveat and Second Mortgage

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get a bridging loan without having any income?

No, not as a general position. On a regulated consumer bridge, a sale exit is not a substitute for the lender's serviceability assessment. The lender still has to assess the repayment position under its product and responsible-lending process. Some non-bank and private commercial facilities lean much harder on security and the exit and much less on conventional income evidence, but that is a different structure with different protections and cost. If income evidence is the obstacle, the honest conversation is about which regulated or commercial pathway actually fits, not about finding a lender who will not ask.

Is it harder to get a loan if you're self-employed?

It is a different assessment rather than a harder one. The same servicing test applies, but the income that feeds it is built from business evidence rather than read off a payslip, so the work moves from the lender to you and your accountant. What changes for a bridge specifically is timing: the evidence has to support the larger, temporary position and it has to be current when the bridge is assessed, not when the purchase was agreed. The fundamentals of how lenders read self-employed income are covered in the self-employed home loans guide.

What makes you eligible for a bridging loan?

Three things every lender tests: the security position, the servicing position, and the credibility of the exit. Security means the lender takes both properties and is comfortable with what they are worth and what is already owed against them. Servicing means you can carry the position while both are held, assessed on the larger figure on most files. The exit means the sale that repays the bridge is believable on the evidence, not just intended. On alt doc income the second of those is where the file usually turns, which is why the alt doc lending evidence set has to be assembled before the purchase goes unconditional.

How long can you use a bridging loan?

The term is set per facility, agreed at approval, and it varies by lender and by structure. The more useful question is how long your sale will actually take, because that is the number the term has to cover and it is the one most borrowers estimate from the wrong input. A marketing period is one phase of four, and the other three are preparation, contract and cooling off, and the settlement period itself. Set the term from local selling evidence, and plan the refinance that follows settlement early, because refinancing once the sale settles is part of the same decision.

How long does it typically take for a bridging loan to be approved?

It depends on four things, and none of them is the lender's advertised turnaround. Those four are whether the valuation on your existing home has been instructed, whether your income evidence is already assembled and current, whether the first mortgagee's consent is needed on an existing loan, and what your contract dates actually are. Files where the valuation is ordered late and the accountant has not yet agreed to sign are the ones that run long, and that is a sequencing problem rather than a lender problem. If the contract date is the binding constraint, what actually sets a settlement timeline is the place to start.

Can my bridging pre-approval change before settlement if I'm self-employed?

Yes. A conditional or pre-approval can change before settlement if your financial position, the property valuation or outstanding conditions change, or if the income evidence has to be refreshed. For a self-employed borrower, a new BAS quarter, softer trading, an EOFY change in the required financials or an accountant who will no longer sign can change the final assessment even when the original pre-approval looked comfortable. Before bidding at auction or allowing a finance condition to expire, confirm what remains conditional and whether the lender requires updated self-employed evidence. Pre-approval is not settlement certainty.

What is an end debt bridging loan?

End debt is the loan left after your existing home sells and the net sale proceeds are applied. An end-debt bridge is simply a bridge that leaves an ongoing loan behind, which is common when you are buying a more expensive home. Peak debt is the temporary combined position before the sale. Lenders do not all use those two figures in the same way for serviceability: some focus on end debt, some assess a bridge-period payment on peak debt, and some test both. If end debt is the loan you will live with, structure it at the start rather than treating it as an afterthought.

Is bridging finance regulated in Australia?

It depends on the borrower, the purpose and the structure, not on the product name alone. The National Credit Code applies where the debtor and purpose tests are met, including credit for personal, domestic or household purposes and specified residential-property purposes. Separately, ASIC identifies a carve-out for low-cost, short-term credit of less than 62 days; the low-cost condition is part of that carve-out. A short facility is not outside the Code merely because it is short. If a facility is offered outside the Code, understand which consumer-credit protections do not apply before comparing the price.

Should I sell first, use bridging, or make my offer subject to sale?

Selling first carries the lowest finance risk because the old debt is repaid before the new purchase, but it can create a housing and timing problem. Bridging lets you buy first, but the lender may assess peak debt, end debt or both and you carry the risk that the sale is late or lower than expected. A subject-to-sale offer can make the purchase conditional on selling your existing home where the vendor and contract allow it, which may avoid or shorten the debt overlap but can make your offer less certain to the seller and is not the normal auction position. For a self-employed borrower, compare the three routes using the lender's actual servicing method, the currency of your income evidence, contract certainty and the realistic sale timeline rather than convenience alone.

Can you buy at auction before your house sells?

Yes, and it is the highest-risk way to do it, because an auction contract is ordinarily unconditional when the hammer falls. There is no finance clause to fall back on, so the income evidence, the accountant's agreement to sign, the valuation on your existing home and the assessment of the combined position all have to be settled before you bid rather than after. Whether any cooling-off period applies to your particular contract is a question for your solicitor before the auction. If you are bidding without those four things done, you are not buying subject to finance, you are buying and hoping.

Where do I get the deposit if my house hasn't sold yet?

From somewhere other than the sale, because the sale has not happened yet. The contract deposit is payable when you sign, which is weeks or months before any sale proceeds exist, and it is a separate problem from the loan that funds settlement. The realistic sources are cash you already hold, equity released against your existing home before you sign, a deposit bond, money from the business, or a smaller deposit negotiated with the vendor before you sign rather than asked for afterwards. Each one has a different consequence for how the rest of the file reads, and a deposit bond in particular defers the deposit rather than the settlement.

How does capitalised interest work on a bridging loan?

Capitalising means the interest is added to what you owe instead of being paid from cash each month. The interest still accrues and increases the loan balance; nothing is forgiven. If the sale takes longer than modelled, more interest is added before the sale proceeds are applied, which increases the residual end debt. Not every bridge capitalises interest: some products require interest-only payments during the bridging period, so confirm the repayment method before comparing costs.

Can you challenge a bank valuation in Australia?

You can ask for a review, and what moves a review is evidence rather than disagreement. That means comparable sales the valuer did not have, a factual error about the property itself, or completed work that was not reflected in the report. An agent's appraisal is not that evidence, because a valuation for mortgage purposes and a marketing appraisal are different documents produced for different purposes. Whether a review is available at all, and whether a second valuation can be instructed, is a matter of the lender's own policy rather than a right you hold, which is why the sequencing matters more than the appeal: a valuation instructed while you still have a finance clause leaves you room to respond to it. When the valuation lands short goes through the options in order.

What if my current home sells for less than expected?

The lower net sale proceeds flow directly into a higher end debt. If the sale is below the amount used in the bridge model, the residual loan rises by that shortfall before allowing for any extra interest or settlement adjustments. That may still fit the approved ongoing structure, or it may require more cash, a variation or a new assessment. This is why the bridge should be modelled on a conservative sale outcome before you buy, not only on the agent's best-case price.

What happens if you can't settle on a property purchase?

Your contract decides, not your lender, and it is a solicitor conversation before it is a finance one. The contract sets whether you are late and from when, what being late costs, whether the other side can serve a notice requiring you to complete, and what happens to the deposit you have already paid. Those provisions differ between contracts and between states and territories, so nothing about them can safely be read off a web page. In practice the cheapest responses are also the ones that stop being available first: an agreed extension with the vendor, then a lender that can fund on a new date, and short-term funding last of all.

What are the downsides of a bridging loan?

You carry two positions at once, the clock is fixed, and the failure mode is a forced sale. Interest accrues on the whole combined debt for the overlap, and capitalising it does not remove it from the assessment or from what you eventually repay. If the sale runs past the end date, the position is reassessed on the full combined debt and your options narrow in a specific order. That is not a reason to avoid the structure, it is the reason the term is a decision rather than a product feature, and it is why the instrument itself is covered separately in the bridging, caveat and second mortgage guide.

Is there an alternative to a bridging loan?

Yes, several, and the question that matters for a self-employed borrower is not which is cheapest but which ones survive contact with alt doc income. A deposit bond, a longer or simultaneous settlement negotiated in the contract, releasing equity without selling, a second mortgage or caveat-backed facility, and selling first and renting back are all live routes. The comparison table above sets them out on the only axis that decides it, which is how your income gets assessed on each one.

Fact verification log

The primary-source figures and quotations in the original build were re-read on 26 August 2026. The targeted lender-policy corrections, journey additions and final machine-query validation in F22 to F29 were re-checked on 27 August 2026, when the page was reviewed again. Each entry below records what was read, what was confirmed, and where a claim was narrowed rather than shipped.

1. F1. Bridging finance definition, the regulator's own wording. CONFIRMED VERBATIM. ASIC's Moneysmart glossary defines bridging finance as "short-term finance that covers the period between buying a new property and selling your existing property". Glossary entry last updated 1 October 2019. Shipped in S1 with the source named and linked. Moneysmart glossary.
2. F2. National Credit Code debtor test and purpose test. CONFIRMED VERBATIM. Debtor test: "the debtor is a natural person or strata corporation". Purpose test: "personal, domestic or household purposes, or to purchase, renovate or improve residential property for investment purposes, or to refinance credit previously provided for this purpose". ASIC page last updated 1 August 2025. Shipped in S9 and mirrored in FAQ 9. ASIC, National Credit Code.
3. F3. The Code does not apply to low-cost, short-term credit of less than 62 days. CONFIRMED VERBATIM, and the low-cost condition is on the same page in the same clause: the Code "does not apply to certain loans, including: low-cost, short-term credit (less than 62 days)". Shipped in S9 and FAQ 9 with the low-cost condition inside the same sentence as the day count. The page never states that credit under 62 days is unregulated. ASIC, National Credit Code.
4. F4. Serviceability buffer of at least 3.0 per cent. CONFIRMED VERBATIM, with the routing corrected to the source's own wording: APG 223 states that under Attachment C of Prudential Standard APS 220 Credit Risk Management, "ADI's must apply a buffer over a loan's interest rate of at least 3.0 per cent, unless determined otherwise by APRA". Guide effective 19 June 2025. Shipped in S2 with all three qualifiers adjacent: it binds authorised deposit-taking institutions, APRA can and does change it, and it is never a rate the borrower pays. AFCA dispute-response timeframes, referred to under F4 in the brief's S9 note, are NOT shipped: the brief's fact table assigns F4 to the APRA buffer and supplies no dispute-timeframe value, so nothing was invented to fill it. APRA, APG 223 Residential Mortgage Lending.
5. F5. Loan to value ratios above 90 per cent expose an ADI to higher risk of loss. CONFIRMED VERBATIM. "APRA has not formally defined 'high LVR lending', but experience shows that LVRs above 90 per cent (including capitalised LMI premium or other fees) clearly expose an ADI to a higher risk of loss." Guide effective 19 June 2025. Shipped in S4 with the qualifier that it is guidance to lenders about their own risk, not a promise about borrower access. APRA, APG 223 Residential Mortgage Lending.
6. F6. National median time on market, three months to July. CONFIRMED VERBATIM, value read this build: "Homes took a median 35 days to sell over the three months to July". Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, published 14 August 2026. Shipped in S6 as a marketing-period median only, explicitly not the time from listing to settlement. Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, August 2026.
7. F7. National median and the capital city spread, April pack. CONFIRMED, values read this build: median time on market 30 days nationally for the quarter, with Perth at a median of nine days against Darwin at 47 days and Canberra at 43 days. Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, published 10 April 2026. The spread, roughly a factor of five, is the point the page makes; the figures are shown so the spread can be checked. The capital city day counts circulating in the current search panel are cited to a social media post, disagree with this chart pack, and are NOT used anywhere on the page. Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, April 2026.
8. F8. Six-month main residence overlap rule and its three conditions. CONFIRMED VERBATIM, all three conditions read this build: "If you acquire a new home before you dispose of your old one, you can treat both as your main residence for up to 6 months", conditional on having "lived in your old home as your main residence for a continuous period of at least 3 months in the 12 months before you disposed of it", not having used it "to produce income (such as rent) in any part of that 12 months when it wasn't your main residence", and "the new property becomes your main residence". Page updated 22 June 2026. The panel version of this condition, which states the old home must have been the main residence for the entire ownership period, is a conflation of the full-exemption test with the overlap conditions and is NOT used. ATO wording only. Australian Taxation Office, moving to a new main residence.
9. F9. Absence rule, unlimited or up to six years if producing income. CONFIRMED VERBATIM: if the former home is used to produce income "you can choose to treat it as your main residence for up to 6 years after you stop living in it"; if it is not used to produce income "you can treat it as your main residence for an unlimited period after you stop living in it". Page updated 22 June 2026. Shipped in S7, S10 and the third scenario, each time with the accountant routing attached. Australian Taxation Office, treating a former home as your main residence.
10. F10. Conventional settlement periods, New South Wales and Queensland. CONFIRMED VERBATIM, both jurisdictions, with an as-of correction on one. New South Wales: "Settlement usually takes place around 6 weeks after contracts are exchanged" and "you have a 5 business day cooling-off period after you exchange contracts", page updated 22 September 2025. Queensland: settlement "is most commonly 4-6 weeks after both parties sign the contract" and "mostly falls within a range of 30-90 days", page last updated 3 November 2020, which is the oldest source on this page and is flagged as such here. Both ranges are rendered with "to" rather than the source's dash, per the punctuation rule. Both states are named in full and the page states that other states and territories must be confirmed. New South Wales Government and Queensland Government.
11. F11. Electronic settlement is weekday only, closing times differ by state. CONFIRMED. The published hours of operation show financial settlement available Monday to Friday only, with different closing times in every jurisdiction and gazetted national public holidays excluded. No individual state cut-off time is published on this page, because the page's point is only that the window is finite and weekday-bound. The source page carries no visible last-updated date, which is recorded here as a limitation. PEXA, hours of operation.
12. F12. Bank valuations are to a professional market value standard. CONFIRMED WITH ONE CORRECTION, and the brief's wording is narrowed to what the source actually says. ANZVGP 112, effective 1 January 2025, section 3.0: "The primary role for Members is to advise the market value of the asset(s) for mortgage and loan security purposes", and section 5.6 requires the valuer to comment on any difference between their value and the sale price. The source does NOT contain a comparison between a valuation and an agent's appraisal, so no such comparison is attributed to it. The page states the market value standard and the sale-price limb as sourced, and makes the appraisal point in its own voice without attribution. Australian Property Institute, ANZVGP 112.
13. F13. 2025 Federal Court decision on business purpose declarations. CONFIRMED VERBATIM from the regulator's media release, dated 16 April 2025: the respondents "could not simply rely on the 'Business Purpose Declaration'" and "had to undertake reasonable inquiries about the purpose for which the credit was provided", and such declarations are "ineffective including where a credit provider would have known, if they had made reasonable inquiries about the credit purpose, that the credit was in fact to be applied for personal use". Cited on the page as "a 2025 Federal Court decision" with the media release linked and no party named in body prose, per the brief and per the no-lender-names rule. ASIC media release 25-060MR.
14. F14. AFCA cannot review a lender's credit-risk assessment. CONFIRMED VERBATIM, with its own carve-out attached: among the complaints AFCA cannot consider is "a financial firm's assessment of the credit risk posed by a borrower (with exceptions in cases of irresponsible lending or financial hardship)", Section C of the AFCA Rules. Shipped in S9 stated the way it falls, which is against the borrower, and with the two exceptions kept in the same sentence. AFCA, how we resolve complaints and our Rules.
15. F15. The searcher-journey material added on 26 August 2026. UNVERIFIED BY DESIGN, PRACTITIONER DESCRIPTION. The arrival routing, the borrower-word to lender-word translation, the first-week ordering and the auction sequencing are descriptions of how these files run in practice. They cite no source because none is claimed, they state no figure, ratio, rate or timeframe, and they should be read as practitioner judgement rather than as verified fact.
16. F16. What happens on the day the sale settles. UNVERIFIED, PRACTITIONER DESCRIPTION. That settling a sale and releasing the security taken over it are separate steps run by different parties, and that a bridge is priced differently to the loan left behind, are described generically with no lender named and no figure attached. No conveyancing timeframe is asserted.
17. F17. Where the deposit comes from before the sale. UNVERIFIED, PRACTITIONER DESCRIPTION. No deposit percentage, bond premium, threshold or fee is stated anywhere in this block, deliberately, because the amount is set by the contract rather than by a lender or a convention. Deposit bond mechanics are described at the level of what they defer and what they do not.
18. F18. What happens if a settlement date is missed. UNVERIFIED, AND DELIBERATELY NOT ASSERTED. The page states only that the contract governs each question and names the categories the contract addresses. It does not state any statutory position, any interest consequence, any notice period or any outcome for the deposit, in any state or territory, and it routes the reader to a solicitor or conveyancer in the same block. Any future attempt to make this section more specific needs primary sources per jurisdiction.
19. F20. Machine-query validation, 27 August 2026. A five-seed AI Query Map run across OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity returned 20 actual provider-exposed queries. Every block added in v3 was independently reached by at least three of the four providers: the deposit-before-the-sale branch, the missed-settlement branch, the after-the-sale-settles branch and the peak-debt-over-combined-securities framing of the maximum loan. The four FAQs shipped in v3 as PROVENANCE ANTICIPATED are therefore reclassified MACHINE-QUERY VALIDATED under V24 R5b. No page claim changed as a result of this run: the validation is about which questions to answer, not about what the answers are.
20. F21. Facility costs and valuation review, added 27 August 2026. UNVERIFIED, PRACTITIONER DESCRIPTION, AND DELIBERATELY WITHOUT FIGURES. The five cost categories, their timing and what drives their size are described generically. No interest rate, establishment fee, valuation fee, discharge fee, extension fee, band or range is stated anywhere in the block, and none is implied. The capitalised-interest explanation is mechanical rather than numerical and now expressly applies only where the selected product capitalises interest. On valuation review, the page states only what moves a review and that availability is lender policy rather than a borrower right. It asserts no statutory or industry entitlement to a second valuation.
21. F19. Auction contracts and cooling off. PARTIALLY CONSTRAINED. The page states that an auction contract is ordinarily unconditional on the fall of the hammer and then explicitly refers the reader to their solicitor on whether any cooling-off period applies to their contract. The New South Wales cooling-off figure elsewhere on the page remains sourced at F10 to the New South Wales Government page and is not extended to auctions.
22. F22. Peak debt versus end debt serviceability is not universal. CONFIRMED FROM CURRENT LENDER POLICY DOCUMENTS. One published bridging fact sheet states that standard lending criteria applies on the proposed end debt. A separate current broker underwriting procedure states that serviceability for the bridge period is assessed on both peak debt and end debt, with a bridge-period repayment calculated on peak debt and the ongoing repayment calculated on end debt. The page was corrected on 27 August 2026 to remove the claim that most files universally service on peak debt. Current bridging fact sheet; current underwriting procedure.
23. F23. Conditional pre-approval can change before settlement. CONFIRMED FROM CURRENT LENDER GUIDANCE. Current guidance states that conditional pre-approval can be updated if the borrower's financial situation changes, and renewal guidance can require updated income, commitments and documents to reverify income. Shipped in S3 without a lender-specific validity period; the BAS-quarter examples are practitioner application to a self-employed file, not a universal lender rule. Current conditional pre-approval guidance; current pre-approval renewal guidance.
24. F24. A lower sale price can change the ongoing loan. CONFIRMED FROM CURRENT BRIDGING GUIDANCE. Current published material states that market movements can affect the sale price achieved and may affect the ongoing loan, and its FAQ says a lower-than-expected sale should trigger a review of the ongoing loan and available options. Shipped in S7 and FAQ with no rate, threshold or promise attached. Current bridging guide.
25. F25. Interest treatment during a bridge varies by product. CONFIRMED FROM CURRENT PRODUCT MATERIAL. One current bridging fact sheet states that no repayments are required during the bridge because interest is capitalised; another current bridging guide states that repayments are interest-only during the bridging period. The cost section and capitalised-interest FAQ were corrected so they no longer imply that all bridge interest waits until sale. Current capitalising product fact sheet; current interest-only bridging guide.
26. F26. Existing mortgage and cash-to-complete journey additions. PARTLY CONFIRMED, PARTLY PRACTITIONER DESCRIPTION. Current major-lender bridging guidance shows that some bridge structures require the existing home loan to be refinanced to the bridge lender and that available equity may be used for the new-property deposit and some upfront costs. The page deliberately says "often, but not always" and gives no universal discharge timeframe, fee, deposit percentage or funding threshold. Current bridging guide.
27. F27. Final five-seed machine-query validation, 27 August 2026. MACHINE-QUERY VALIDATION, NOT FACTUAL VERIFICATION. A targeted run across OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity returned 20 actual provider-exposed queries; Grok was unavailable because the external runner's xAI credential failed. The strongest adjacent intent was self-employed bridging pre-approval versus unconditional approval at four of five enabled providers, followed by the core self-employed buy-before-sell cluster at three of five. The run also independently surfaced subject-to-sale, existing-mortgage portability/security substitution, retaining the old home as a rental, and sale-delay/expiry recovery. Those signals changed question wording and extraction structure only; they are not used as evidence for any finance, legal or tax claim.
28. F28. Subject-to-sale and home-loan portability wording. CONFIRMED AT THE LEVEL SHIPPED. Consumer Affairs Victoria states that a private-sale offer can be negotiated subject to the sale of an existing property and that auction purchases cannot simply be made subject to conditions. One major lender's current published portability guidance defines portability as keeping the home loan while changing the property securing it, and says eligible borrowers can retain the existing rate, repayments and attached features such as an offset; it also notes conditions around fixed-rate break costs and increases to the loan. Cited generically in body prose with no lender named, per the no-lender-names rule, and identified here in the log only. The page presents both as options that depend on contract or lender eligibility, not as Australia-wide rights. Consumer Affairs Victoria, buying property by private sale; Westpac, home loan portability.
29. F29. Bridging security can be multiple or single security. CONFIRMED FROM CURRENT PRODUCT MATERIAL. The previous wording that every bridge is cross-collateralised over both properties was too broad. Current Connective Bridge product information expressly lists first-mortgage bridging on multiple or single security. The page now says many mainstream residential bridges use both properties while specialist structures can differ, and it tells the reader to confirm the actual security rather than infer it from the word "bridging". Current Connective Bridge product information.

Nick Lim

Broker, Switchboard Finance

0412 843 260 / hello@switchboardfinance.com.au

FBAA Accredited

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Disclosure: This article is general information only and does not constitute financial advice. Nick Lim is an FBAA Accredited Finance Broker with Switchboard Finance. This page discusses conveyancing, contract and tax matters that sit outside finance broking: speak to your conveyancer or solicitor about contracts, cooling off and settlement, and to your accountant about capital gains tax, land tax and duty. All scenarios are illustrative, actual outcomes depend on individual circumstances, lender policy and market conditions at the time of application. Speak to a qualified finance broker before making any financial decisions.