A refinance decline doesn’t close every door to your home’s equity. A bank assesses a refinance against your ability to service a new loan — income, expenses, existing debts, and its own credit policy. Other ways to access equity ask a different question: what the property is worth, or whether you meet a different set of eligibility criteria altogether. This article sets out three of them honestly, including their limits.

Can I access home equity if the bank won’t refinance me?

Yes. A refinance is one specific route to equity — a new or larger loan secured against your property, assessed against your income and expenses. If a bank declines that application, three other routes exist that don’t rely on the same test: a fractional sale (the model MyBrix operates), home reversion, and the Commonwealth’s Home Equity Access Scheme (HEAS). Two of the three are sales, not loans, at all; the third is still a loan, but its eligibility runs on age and pension status rather than a bank’s income-serviceability assessment.

None of the three is a way around lending rules — they’re structurally different products, assessed against different things, and each comes with its own costs and limits, set out below.

Why do banks decline refinance applications?

A refinance is a credit product regulated under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 — the same responsible-lending framework that applies to a reverse mortgage, as Moneysmart sets out. In broad terms, a lender must assess whether you could meet the proposed repayments without substantial hardship, weighing your income, expenses and existing debts against its own credit policy. Lenders don’t publish one universal checklist, and policies vary between institutions.

ASIC’s responsible-lending guide (RG 209, current as at July 2026) sets that legal test without prescribing a single formula: a lender must make reasonable inquiries into your income and expenses, take reasonable steps to verify them, and work out whether you could meet the repayments without substantial hardship. Age on its own isn’t a knock-back factor — where a borrower is approaching retirement, RG 209 directs a lender to work out whether that’s likely to change their income and by how much, treating it as a foreseeable change in circumstances, not a bar. Expense benchmarks such as the Household Expenditure Measure (HEM) can plausibility-test an application, but ASIC’s guidance is explicit that a benchmark figure doesn’t verify an individual borrower’s true expenses and isn’t meant to be relied on alone.

Banks also work within APRA’s prudential guidance for residential lending (APG 223, current as at July 2026), which sits on top of the ASIC test. It records a requirement — set in the binding prudential standard APS 220 — for a buffer of at least 3.0% over a loan’s interest rate, applied to both new and existing debts, and directs a prudent lender to weigh a borrower’s likely lower income and repayment capacity as retirement approaches. Where rental income forms part of an application — your own or a subletting arrangement — the same guidance describes a minimum 20% haircut on expected rental income as prudent practice, so a lender is likely to count only part of it; this is APRA’s description of prudent practice, not a rule every bank applies identically. These are framework-level descriptions, not any one lender’s policy: individual banks set their own serviceability rules within them, and specifics — including exact shading and how age is weighed — vary between institutions.

Which ways to access home equity don’t depend on bank serviceability?

The table below summarises the three routes; each is explained in more depth further down.

Route	Type	Eligibility mainly depends on	A key limit
Fractional sale (MyBrix)	Sale of a fractional interest	Property + MyBrix criteria; minimum Brix holding	10-year maximum term
Home reversion	Sale of a future-value share	Provider’s age minimum	Discount off market value
Home Equity Access Scheme	Commonwealth loan	Age Pension age + pension eligibility	Compounding interest

How does a fractional sale work if you can’t refinance?

MyBrix divides each listed property into 10,000 Brix — a Brix is a fractional economic interest in the property’s future value, not a loan and not a share of your title. The process runs through an application, a consultation, a financial assessment where required, and a valuation by an independent licensed valuer (typically two to four weeks), before an Initial Brix Offering — the process through which investors buy the property’s Brix and your funding is raised.

That financial assessment step exists, but it isn’t a loan-serviceability test: a fractional sale creates no debt and no repayment schedule, so there’s no serviceability threshold to fail in the way a refinance has one. Eligibility centres instead on the property and MyBrix’s own criteria — owner-occupied residential is the primary case, and some investment properties may also qualify. You must keep a minimum Brix holding once funding completes, generally 20% (2,000 of the 10,000 Brix); lower holdings, such as 10%, may be approved case by case.

The maximum term is 10 years, and the funding fee is either 5.0% of the funded amount upfront or 0.1% per month deferred — one or the other, agreed per listing. Figures are as at July 2026, from the MyBrix Product Disclosure Statement.

You remain the registered legal owner throughout and keep living in the home; selling Brix doesn’t affect your occupancy rights. The trade-off sits on the other side of the ledger: once Brix are sold, the economic benefits attached to them — including a proportional share of any future growth — belong to the investors who hold them, unless you buy them back. Our guide to accessing home equity without a loan walks through the full mechanics, fees and comparison against reverse mortgages and HEAS.

What about home reversion?

Home reversion sells a share of your home’s future sale proceeds to a provider for a lump sum now — no interest, no repayments, and no income test, because it’s a property transaction rather than a loan. In one current Moneysmart worked example, a provider buying a 20% share of a $500,000 home’s future value might offer $37,000–$78,000 today, depending on the owner’s age; the discount reflects how long the provider may wait — potentially decades — to receive anything back.

Eligibility instead runs on age: Moneysmart puts the general baseline at 60 or older, and Homesafe — currently the only Australian provider verified for this comparison, operating in metropolitan Melbourne and Sydney — publishes minimums of 60 or older in Victoria, and 55 or older in New South Wales provided one owner is at least 60. As at July 2026, this remains the shape of the local market: a small number of providers, age-gated rather than income-gated.

What about the Home Equity Access Scheme (HEAS)?

HEAS is a Commonwealth loan, not a sale — interest accrues at 3.95% per year, compounding fortnightly (as at July 2026), and there’s nothing to repay until the arrangement ends. What sets it apart from a bank refinance is the eligibility test set out by Services Australia: you or your partner must be of Age Pension age and qualify for an eligible pension, including at a zero rate, offer Australian real estate as security with adequate insurance, and not be bankrupt. There’s no income-serviceability assessment in the way a bank runs one for a refinance. Each fortnight, your combined pension and loan payments are capped at 150% of the maximum pension rate, and the maximum amount you can borrow comes from an age-based formula applied to your property’s value — Services Australia publishes the full workings.

Being a loan, HEAS still has a genuine cost: interest compounds over time, and the amount owed reduces what the property eventually contributes to your estate. It’s a different eligibility gate to a refinance, not a lower-cost substitute for one.

What should you weigh before choosing a route?

Time and cost. A loan’s cost compounds the longer it runs. A sale-based option’s cost tracks the property’s value, whichever way that moves. Neither is automatically cheaper — the horizon and the numbers decide, and that’s a calculation to work through with a licensed adviser.

Occupancy and control. Providers differ on precisely which rights an owner keeps — to live in the home, renovate it, rent it out, or sell it — and that’s worth confirming in writing before committing to one.

Age Pension. Converting home equity into money or other assets can change how Services Australia assesses your payments, whichever of these routes you use. Payments can be affected in ways specific to your situation — contact Services Australia’s free Financial Information Service before proceeding.

Tax. Tax treatment differs between a fractional sale, home reversion and a Commonwealth loan. Tax outcomes depend on your circumstances — speak with a registered tax agent before acting.

If bills or repayments are hard to manage more broadly, where can you get help?

Everything above assumes the question is specifically about a declined refinance. If money is tight in a broader sense, that’s a separate conversation worth having early. Moneysmart — a federal government website run by ASIC, offering free tools, tips and guidance — is a starting point; it doesn’t lend money, arrange loans, or give personal advice itself, but it can point you toward support.

Where can you get reliable information?

Moneysmart’s equity release pages cover reverse mortgages and home reversion; Services Australia publishes the HEAS terms in full; and for MyBrix specifically, the Product Disclosure Statement and Target Market Determination at mybrix.com.au set out the current product terms. General information can map these options against each other; it can’t weigh them for your situation. A licensed financial adviser can.