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The ratio

What share of your income the mortgage is actually taking.

The benchmark most Australian research uses is 30% of gross income. Work out yours below, then read what the number does and does not mean. Nothing leaves your browser.

$

Before tax, everyone in the household combined.

$
How often you repay

Worked out in your browser. Nothing is sent to us and nothing is stored.

Enter your household income and your repayment to see what share of your income the mortgage is taking.

The benchmark

What the 30% benchmark actually says

Housing stress is most often used to describe lower income households that spend more than 30% of their gross income on housing costs.1 That qualifier matters and it is almost always dropped. The measure was built for lower income households because they have the least room to absorb a high housing share, and applying it unchanged to every household turns a careful research definition into a horoscope.

A household on $250,000 spending 35% on the mortgage has more left over than a household on $80,000 spending 28%. The percentage is the same kind of number in both cases and it means something completely different. So treat your figure above as a ratio worth knowing rather than a diagnosis, and pay attention to what is left after the repayment rather than to which side of 30 you landed on.

The other reason the number moves is that it is not only about you. Housing costs include rates, water and other charges in the formal measures. This calculator uses the home loan repayment alone, which isolates the part a better interest rate could actually change.

1 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Housing affordability, retrieved 28 July 2026.

The causes

What pushes the number up

  1. Rate rises. The most common cause and the least controllable. A variable loan reprices with the market, and the repayment follows.
  2. A fixed term ending. The sharpest version of the same thing, because it arrives as a single step rather than a series. Loans written at pandemic era fixed rates roll onto current pricing all at once. What to do before a fixed rate expires covers the timing.
  3. Income falling. A reduction in hours, a change of job, or a household going from two incomes to one. The repayment did not move, the denominator did.
  4. A rate that quietly drifted. The average rate on outstanding owner occupier loans sits above the sharpest advertised rates, and the gap widens the longer a loan is left alone.2 This one is invisible, because nothing about your loan changed on the day it became uncompetitive.

2 Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Table F6, data to 31 May 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.

The signs

What it looks like before it looks like anything

Mortgage stress rarely arrives as a missed repayment. It arrives as a series of small adjustments that each seem reasonable on their own, and the pattern is easier to see from a list than from inside it.

  1. The buffer stopped rebuilding. Savings that used to recover between pay cycles now sit flat or drift down. This is usually the first signal and the easiest to explain away.
  2. Other credit is filling the gap. A card balance that no longer clears, buy now pay later used for ordinary groceries, or a personal loan consolidating the last two.
  3. Fixed costs are being cut before discretionary ones. Cancelling insurance, deferring health cover or reducing super contributions is a different order of decision from cancelling a subscription.
  4. The repayment date is something you plan around. Timing bills against it, or moving money in the day before, means the margin has gone.

None of these are failures and none of them are unusual. They are worth naming because each one is much easier to address at this stage than after a missed repayment, when the available options narrow considerably.

What to check

Rule out the fixable cause first

Before considering anything structural, find out whether your rate is the problem. Existing borrowers routinely pay more than new borrowers at the same lender for the same product, a pattern consumer research describes as a loyalty tax.3 If that is what is happening to you, it is the cheapest thing on this page to fix and it does not require changing anything about your life.

The sequence that costs nothing: find your actual rate, compare it against what the same lender is currently advertising to new customers, then ask them to match it. A surprising share of repricing requests succeed on the first call, because retaining you is cheaper for them than acquiring someone else. How to review your loan walks through it, and the loyalty tax explains why the gap opens in the first place.

If the rate is not the problem

Then the options are harder and worth taking seriously rather than quickly. Extending the loan term lowers the repayment and raises the total interest. Switching to interest only does the same more sharply. Both are legitimate tools for a genuine cash flow squeeze and both cost real money, so they are worth discussing with your lender's hardship team, who deal with this constantly and are not the same people as the sales desk. If repayments are already being missed, free financial counselling is available in every state and it is worth using early rather than late.

3 Canstar, consumer research on the loyalty tax, 15 June 2026.

Keep going

Questions

Common questions

What is mortgage stress?

It describes a household whose home loan repayments take a large enough share of income to squeeze everything else. The most common benchmark in Australian research is spending more than 30% of gross income on housing costs, though that measure is specifically defined for lower income households rather than for everyone.

Is 30% a real threshold?

It is a research benchmark, not a rule. Housing stress is most often used to describe lower income households that spend more than 30% of their gross income on housing costs. Applied to a high income household it loses most of its meaning, because what is left after housing matters more than the percentage itself.

Should I use gross or net income?

The 30% benchmark is defined on gross income, so this calculator uses gross to stay comparable with the research. If you want a sense of how it feels rather than how it measures, run it again on take home pay. The percentage will be noticeably higher and it is the more honest number for budgeting.

What should I do first if the number is high?

Check whether your interest rate is the problem before assuming the loan is. Rates on existing loans drift above what new borrowers are offered, and a rate that is half a percentage point off market is worth real money each month. That is a fixable cause, and it is worth ruling out before considering harder options.

Does this include rates, insurance and strata?

No. This calculator uses your home loan repayment only, so it isolates the part of your housing cost that a better rate could change. Broader housing stress measures include rates, water and other housing costs, which means your figure here will be lower than a full housing cost measure would be.

Sources

Where these figures come from

Australian Institute of Health and WelfareHousing affordability, retrieved 28 July 2026.
Reserve Bank of AustraliaStatistical Table F6, data to 31 May 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
Canstarconsumer research on the loyalty tax, 15 June 2026.

Market figures are point in time published figures, checked each time this page is reviewed.

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