Locum, Contractor and Clinic Owner Home Loans for Veterinarians

Your income does not fit a standard bank form. Here is how different lenders actually assess it.

Vet income rarely fits neatly into the boxes a standard bank application form expects. You might be salaried at one clinic and locuming at two others. You might be a contractor invoicing on an ABN. You might own a share of the practice you work in. Each of these situations is treated differently by different lenders, and the difference can be the gap between an approval and a decline, or between a modest loan and a genuinely accurate one.

Salaried Employee: The Simplest Case, Mostly

If you are PAYG employed at a single clinic with a consistent salary, your application will look like most standard home loan applications. Lenders will want recent payslips and an income statement from myGov. The complexity usually appears when overtime, on-call loadings, or allowances make up a meaningful part of your income. Many lenders will count up to 100% of regular overtime if it has been consistent for around 12 months, while others apply an 80% discount regardless of how reliable it is. For a Vet earning a meaningful chunk of overtime each year, this single policy difference can change borrowing capacity substantially.

Locum Work: Treated as Self-Employed, Even If It Feels Casual

If you invoice for locum shifts on an ABN, you are self-employed in the eyes of a lender, regardless of how casual the arrangement feels day to day. Most major banks want two years of tax returns or financial statements to assess self-employed income properly, though a number of non-bank and specialist lenders will work with as little as one year of ABN history if you can support it with bank statements and Business Activity Statements.

This catches a lot of Vets out, particularly those who have recently shifted from full-time employment into locum work to gain flexibility. The income might be higher and more enjoyable, but on paper it can initially look less stable to a lender who does not understand how consistent the demand for experienced locum Vets actually is.

Two Vets with identical incomes can be quoted $100,000 apart in borrowing capacity by different lenders, simply because of how each one assesses locum income, HECS debt, and overtime loadings.

Mixed Income: Salaried Plus Locum Plus Clinic Shifts

Many Vets earn through a genuine mix: a part-time salaried role, locum shifts elsewhere, and the occasional emergency or weekend clinic shift on top. This is where standard bank assessment tools tend to struggle most, because they are built around a single, simple income source. A lender experienced with Vet income knows how to combine these streams into a credible total, rather than treating the complexity as a red flag.

Clinic Owners and Practice Equity Holders

If you hold equity in a practice and receive distributions or trust income, your application sits closer to a small business owner's than an employee's. Lenders will generally want personal and business tax returns, Notices of Assessment, and financial statements, and company or trust structures attract more documentation requirements than a simple sole trader arrangement. The key difference between lenders here is how they treat fluctuations year to year. Some will average your distributions across two years in a way that drags down a genuinely improving income; others have specific policies for professional services businesses that reflect the trajectory more fairly.

What to Have Ready, Regardless of Your Structure

• Tax returns/Notices of Assessment covering one to two years depending on the lender

• Recent payslips and an income statement for any PAYG component of your income

• Business Activity Statements if you are GST registered, which becomes compulsory once ABN income crosses $75,000 in a financial year

• Trust deeds or company financials if relevant to your practice structure

• Recent bank statements showing the regularity of your income, particularly useful if your tax returns do not yet reflect your current earning pattern

Why This Is Where We Add the Most Value

Having owned and grown a Veterinary clinic ourselves, Shelley and I have lived through almost every version of this income complexity, from PAYG to locum invoicing to practice distributions. We know which lenders genuinely understand mixed Vet income and which ones will quietly discount your numbers because their system was not built with your profession in mind. Matching your specific income structure to the right lender is often where the real difference in outcome comes from, more than the interest rate itself.

Not sure how your income will be assessed?

Book a free discovery call. We will look at your actual income structure and tell you which lenders will treat it best.

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