Can I get a joint home loan with my parents?

Yes. Most Australian lenders will write a joint loan with a parent, but they will generally require every borrower to also be on the title. Each borrower is jointly and severally liable for the whole debt, not just their share.

What is the difference between a guarantor and a co-borrower?

A guarantor pledges equity in their own property as extra security but is not on your loan or your title and makes no repayments. A co-borrower is named on the loan and is legally liable for the entire debt.

Can my parents be on the home loan but not on the title?

Rarely. Most Australian lenders require all borrowers to be on the title, because a borrower with no ownership carries the full liability and holds none of the asset. If your parents will be liable for the loan, they should own a share of the property.

Can I use the First Home Guarantee if I buy with my parents?

Generally not. Every applicant on a joint application has to be an eligible first home buyer, so a parent who already owns a home would disqualify it. Families in that position usually use a guarantor loan instead.

What happens if my parents want to come off the loan later?

For a guarantee, you apply to release it once the loan falls below roughly 80% of the property value, which needs a valuation and lender approval. For co-ownership, you buy out their share and refinance - and transferring their share is usually a dutiable transaction assessed on market value.

Australia · 9 min read · Laddered Editorial · 4 Aug 2026

Joint Home Loan With Your Parents: Guarantor, Co-Borrower or Co-Owner?

Three completely different arrangements get called 'buying with your parents'. They carry different risks, different tax bills and different exits. Here is how to tell which one you are actually signing.

family
mortgage
australia
co-ownership

This article is general information only and is not legal, financial, tax, or property advice. Consider advice from a qualified professional for your circumstances.

Three deals, one name

Ask a bank about buying a house with your parents and you'll get an answer about guarantor loans. Ask a conveyancer and you'll get an answer about title. Ask your parents and you'll probably get "we'll just help you out."

Those aren't the same arrangement. There are three of them, they carry very different risks, and families regularly set out to do one and end up signing another without noticing the swap. Given how much money now moves this way — the numbers on the Bank of Mum and Dad are startling — it's worth knowing which deal you're in.

Guarantor. Your parents pledge equity in their own home as extra security for your loan. They own none of your property and make none of the repayments.
Co-borrower. Your parents are named on the loan and legally liable for the debt. Whether they own anything is decided by the title, which is a separate document entirely.
Co-owner. Your parents are on the title holding a defined share, and usually on the loan as well.

If your parents are simply handing over cash, that's a fourth thing again — a gift or a family loan — and gift versus loan versus equity walks through that decision. This article is about the three arrangements where a parent's name ends up on a bank document.

Guarantor: they back the loan and own nothing

The guarantor structure — lenders variously call it a family pledge, family guarantee or security guarantee — is what most banks will steer you towards, and for a lot of families it's the right answer.

Your parents offer equity in their own home as additional security. The bank now holds security over two properties, so the loan-to-value ratio on paper drops, which is how buyers with a 5% deposit avoid lenders mortgage insurance. Your parents don't go on your title, don't make repayments, and have no ownership claim on your place.

What they do have is exposure. The guarantee is usually limited to a specified dollar amount — commonly whatever is needed to bring the effective LVR down to 80% — rather than the whole loan, and that limit matters enormously. If you default, the bank can pursue the guaranteed amount against your parents' home, and in the worst case force its sale. Lenders normally insist your parents get independent legal advice before signing. That requirement isn't a formality.

The guarantee isn't permanent either. Once your loan balance falls below roughly 80% of your property's value, through repayments or growth or both, you can usually apply to have your parents released. That takes a fresh valuation and the lender's agreement, so treat it as a step to plan for rather than something that happens on its own. Ask at application time what the release process looks like — the answer varies by lender, and finding out in year six is worse than knowing in year one.

Co-borrower: liable for all of it, owner of none of it

A co-borrower is on the loan. Joint and several liability means each borrower is on the hook for the entire debt rather than a proportional slice, so a parent who co-borrows is standing behind 100% of the mortgage.

People reach for this hoping to add a parent's income to the application without adding them to the title. In practice most Australian lenders require every borrower to be on the title as well, precisely because a borrower with no ownership carries all of the liability and holds none of the asset. Where a non-owner borrower is allowed at all, it tends to be narrow and spouse-shaped.

Which is just as well, because as a family arrangement it's the worst of the three. The parent takes full legal responsibility for the debt, receives no share of the property and none of the growth, and wears the whole hit to their own borrowing capacity. If your parents are going to be liable for the loan, they should own something.

Co-owner: names on the title, shares on paper

The third option is that your parents buy the property with you. They go on the title, they hold a defined share, and they're typically on the loan too.

Hold the title as tenants in common rather than joint tenants. Tenants in common records each owner's percentage and lets each person leave their share to whoever they choose. Joint tenancy passes a deceased owner's share straight to the survivors regardless of what the will says, which is a horrible surprise for a family with other children. Our comparison of the two goes through it properly.

Then settle the shares. The straightforward method is to divide ownership by each person's share of what went in: if your parents contribute $180,000 and you contribute $120,000 of a $300,000 deposit, that's 60/40. Run your own figures here, and read unequal deposits and ownership percentages for the harder version of the question.

Two decisions deserve more thought than they usually get. First, do the repayments move the shares? A parent who fronts the deposit while you make every repayment for a decade will own something very different at year ten depending on the answer. Pick one and write it down. Second, if the contribution is really meant to become yours eventually, say so in the agreement. An intended inheritance that lives only in everyone's heads is exactly the thing that comes apart when a sibling, a spouse or a lawyer gets involved.

What each one does to borrowing power

This is the part that surfaces years later. Under a standard joint loan, when your parents next apply to borrow for anything, most lenders count the whole joint debt against them while crediting them only their share of any rent. A parent who co-owns an investment flat with one child can find they're unable to help the other one.

If you want the debt to actually follow the ownership, ask about splitting the borrowing. Property share loans — separate loan accounts secured against the one property — let each party borrow their own amount on their own terms. Note the catch that structure doesn't remove: the borrowers still guarantee each other, so separate banking isn't separate liability.

Tax and duty, where families get caught

Stamp duty is charged on the share each person acquires, and the first home buyer concessions carry traps. In several states the concession is assessed across all the buyers, so a parent who has owned property before can wipe out the discount for the child who hasn't. Queensland is more generous, letting each acquirer claim on their own share. Thresholds and rules differ by state and change often, so check the current position with your state revenue office rather than an article.

Capital gains tax is the other one. The main residence exemption follows the person, not the title. A parent who co-owns a property they don't live in is holding an investment share, and their portion of the gain is generally taxable when they sell or get bought out, with the 50% discount usually available after twelve months. Land tax can catch the same parent for the same reason.

Guarantor arrangements sidestep all of this, because the parent never acquires an interest in your property. That's a real and underrated advantage of the guarantee structure, worth weighing against the fact that they also get no share of the growth.

Can you use the First Home Guarantee with a parent?

Usually not, and the reason is simple: every applicant on a joint application generally has to be a first home buyer.

The scheme has moved a lot recently. Joint applications opened up to friends and siblings from 1 July 2023, ending the old couples-only rule, and from 1 October 2025 the income caps and annual place limits were scrapped and the price caps lifted. What didn't change is that the eligibility test applies to everyone on the application. Two siblings who have both never owned can apply together. A parent who already owns a home can't come along without disqualifying it.

That's a large part of why guarantor loans and the First Home Guarantee are the common pairing for parent-assisted purchases, while parent co-ownership sits outside the scheme. Help to Buy, the shared equity scheme that opened in December 2025, has its own eligibility rules and its own income caps. Confirm the current rules before you build a plan on them — this is the fastest-moving part of the topic.

Plan the ending at the beginning

Every one of these arrangements ends. You partner up and want the house in two names instead of three. Your parents retire and want their capital back. Someone dies, and a will meets a title.

Sort out the mechanics while everyone is still cheerful: how a share gets valued, who has first right to buy it, how long the remaining owner gets to refinance, and what happens if nobody can afford the buyout. Transferring a parent's share to you later is a dutiable transaction in most states, usually assessed on the market value of the share rather than whatever you agree to pay between yourselves — so the exit has a price tag worth knowing about in advance. How to buy out a co-owner covers the process, and the buyout calculator will give you a number to argue about.

Keeping it straight afterwards

Whichever structure you choose, the ongoing job is the same and it's dull: everyone paying their share, costs splitting the way you agreed, and a record nobody disputes three years later. That's the layer Laddered handles — each person's contributions and the agreed shares in one place, so an arrangement built on family goodwill still has clear numbers behind it when the goodwill is being tested.

None of this is legal, tax or financial advice, and the scheme rules in particular change from year to year. Get a broker across the loan structure, a solicitor across the title and the agreement, and an accountant across the duty and CGT before anyone signs. Buying with your parents is one of the more sensible things a lot of Australian families do. It just rewards knowing which of the three deals you're actually doing.