Some ways to access home equity skip an income test altogether. Others test something else instead.

Home reversion and a fractional sale — selling part of your property’s value rather than borrowing against it — don’t run a loan-style assessment of your income at all. The government’s Home Equity Access Scheme (HEAS) doesn’t test your income either, but it does gate eligibility to your Age Pension status. A reverse mortgage usually has no ongoing repayments to test income against, but the lender issuing it is still bound by responsible-lending law. A standard refinance or home equity loan is the one route that puts your income through a full assessment.

None of that makes one option better for retirees than another. Each substitutes a different requirement for the income test — a property criterion, an age minimum, a pension status, a lender’s legal obligation — and which one fits depends on the property, the amount needed, and factors a licensed adviser can help you weigh.

Can retirees access home equity without an income test?

The table below sets out what each option checks in place of income.

Option	Income test?	What it checks instead
Home reversion	No	Property + provider’s own age and location criteria
Fractional sale (e.g. MyBrix)	No	Property eligibility, valuation, minimum retained holding
Home Equity Access Scheme (HEAS)	No traditional income test	Age Pension age and qualifying pension status
Reverse mortgage	No ongoing-repayment test in the usual sense	Responsible-lending inquiries under credit law
Refinance / home equity loan	Yes — full serviceability assessment	Income, expenses, other debts, an interest-rate buffer

Assumptions: this table describes the type of requirement each option applies at a regulatory or structural level — an owner-occupied residential property is assumed throughout, and individual providers or lenders layer their own additional policies on top. Figures given below are as at July 2026.

Which options skip an income test completely?

Home reversion and a fractional sale are both structured as a sale of value, not a loan. There’s no debt created, so there’s nothing to service against your income. Home reversion is a credit-free transaction that sits outside the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 entirely, because no interest is charged; a fractional sale works the same way structurally, dividing a property’s economic value into units sold to investors rather than creating a borrower-lender relationship.

Home reversion

A home reversion provider buys a share of your home’s future sale proceeds for a lump sum today, and is repaid — if at all — only when the home is eventually sold. There’s no income test because there’s no repayment obligation to test. What the provider does check is age and location: as at July 2026, Homesafe — the one home reversion provider verified as currently active — publishes minimum ages of 60 in Victoria, and 55 in New South Wales provided one owner is at least 60. That’s an eligibility gate, but it’s about age and the property, not your income.

Fractional sale — the MyBrix model

A fractional sale divides a property into units — MyBrix calls them Brix, a fractional economic interest in the property’s future value — and sells some of them to investors in exchange for funding. You remain the registered legal owner. Because it’s a sale of a fractional interest rather than a loan, there’s no income-based serviceability test in the process.

As at July 2026, the eligibility route runs on the property and MyBrix’s own criteria rather than your income: owner-occupied residential is the primary case, and some investment properties may also be eligible. The process is application, then consultation, then a financial assessment if MyBrix requires one for that listing, then an independent licensed valuer’s valuation — typically two to four weeks — then an Initial Brix Offering, the offer through which investors buy the property’s Brix. That optional financial assessment step is part of MyBrix’s own listing process, not a loan-style test of your ongoing income; it sits alongside the property valuation, not in place of it.

You’ll need to keep a minimum holding once funding completes — generally 20% (2,000 of the property’s 10,000 Brix), with lower holdings such as 10% approved case by case — and the maximum term is 10 years. The Property Assessment fee is $99.

Does the Home Equity Access Scheme test your income?

Not in the way a loan does — but it isn’t requirement-free. HEAS eligibility depends on you or your partner being of Age Pension age and qualifying for an eligible pension, including at a zero rate, plus offering Australian real estate as security with adequate insurance, and not being bankrupt. There’s no assessment of your income or expenses the way a bank tests loan serviceability.

What replaces the income test is a cap tied to your pension. As at July 2026, the HEAS interest rate is 3.95% per year, compounding fortnightly.

Each fortnight, your combined pension and loan payments are capped at 150% of the maximum pension rate, and the maximum loan amount comes from an age-based formula applied to the value of the property offered as security. Lump-sum advances are capped at 50% of the maximum annual pension rate per 26 fortnights, with a maximum of two advances. So the gate isn’t your income — it’s your pension eligibility and the pension rate itself, which caps how much you can draw.

Does a reverse mortgage require an income test?

A reverse mortgage typically has no scheduled repayments while you live in the home — interest compounds instead, and the loan is usually repaid from the sale proceeds when you sell or die. Without a repayment to fund from income each month, there’s no serviceability test in the sense a standard mortgage has.

That doesn’t mean the lender is unregulated. A reverse mortgage is a credit product under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, so responsible-lending conduct rules still apply. Under ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 209, a licensee must make reasonable inquiries and take reasonable steps to verify whether a consumer can meet the obligations of the credit contract without substantial hardship — a test scaled to the product, not a fixed checklist.

Age itself isn’t treated as a bar. RG 209 frames it as a foreseeable change in circumstances: where a consumer is approaching retirement and will still be making repayments afterwards, the licensee has to work out whether that changes their income and by how much. For a reverse mortgage with no scheduled repayments, that particular question looks different from a standard mortgage — but the underlying duty to assess hardship still applies.

Reverse mortgages taken out from 18 September 2012 also carry a statutory no-negative-equity guarantee: you can’t end up owing the lender more than the home is worth. Individual lenders set their own policies within this framework, and those policies vary between institutions.

How does this compare with a standard home loan?

A standard refinance or cash-out home equity loan is the one option in this list that runs a full income-based serviceability assessment, because it comes with scheduled monthly repayments the lender needs to be confident you can meet. Under the same RG 209 framework, that means reasonable inquiries into your income and expenses, verification steps, and — as a common benchmark — comparison against the Household Expenditure Measure, a quarterly figure published by the Melbourne Institute. ASIC is explicit that a benchmark is a notional substitute for genuine inquiry, not proof of what you actually spend, and doesn’t have to be treated as a floor where your verified expenses are lower.

Prudential guidance from APRA adds another layer for banks specifically: a minimum interest-rate buffer of at least 3.0 percentage points over the loan rate, applied to new and existing debts, plus a minimum 20% discount on non-salary income such as rental income. None of this is unique to retirees — it’s the general serviceability framework applied to anyone approaching or already in retirement, where income is expected to change. As with reverse mortgages, no single lender’s policy is asserted here; practices vary between institutions.

If you receive the Age Pension, does any of this change your payment?

Possibly — and it depends on what you do with the money, not on which option you use to access it. Your principal home, plus up to 2 hectares of land around it, stays exempt from the Age Pension assets test for as long as it remains your home; that’s true whatever option you choose. As at July 2026, the full-pension assets test limits are $333,000 for a single homeowner and $600,000 for a single non-homeowner, or $499,000 and $766,000 combined for a couple.

The moment value leaves the home — as cash, a loan balance building against it, or another asset — it can be counted differently. Financial assets are also deemed to earn income under the income test: as at July 2026, at 1.25% up to $66,800 for a single person or $110,600 combined for a couple, and 3.25% above those thresholds.

For a fractional sale specifically, Services Australia’s published guidance and the Guide to Social Security Law cover selling your whole home, moving into care, and holding other real estate — not the case of selling a fractional or partial interest in a home you keep living in. That gap is real: no fractional-sale-specific outcome is stated here, because none is published. Payments can be affected in ways specific to your situation — contact Services Australia’s free Financial Information Service before proceeding. Our guide to how selling a share of your home affects your Age Pension sets out the general framework in full.

Where can you get reliable information?

Moneysmart — ASIC’s free consumer website — publishes the general mechanics of reverse mortgages and home reversion; Services Australia publishes HEAS terms and Age Pension thresholds; and for MyBrix, the Product Disclosure Statement and Target Market Determination sets out fractional-sale terms in full. General information can map which requirement replaces an income test on each option. It can’t tell you which one fits your own circumstances — a licensed financial adviser can.