A record 82% of Australian home loans now rely on mortgage brokers. Why?

Nenyasha Manzvera/Pexels , CC BY Australians are becoming increasingly reliant on mortgage brokers for home loans.

Brokers arranged a record 81.6% of all new and refinanced home loans in the latest June 2026 figures – up from 50.1% in June 2016.

An industry-commissioned report, released in late September , found mortgage brokers arranged 838,815 residential home loans in 2025.

That was up 122,800 loans, or 17.2%, on the year before.

The national body representing Australia’s 24,000 mortgage brokers says we’re now one of just three countries, along with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, where mortgage brokers facilitate more than 80% of mortgages.

What’s behind this rapid change in our home loan habits? And do you always need a broker for a competitive home loan deal – or is it possible to do it yourself? ‘Home loans are confusing’: what buyers told us In 2024, my colleagues and I published a study on the impact of mortgage broker use on borrowers’ understanding of home loans.

It was based on surveys of more than 3,000 Australians in 2019 and 2023, along with small focus group interviews.

As one home buyer from a Parramatta focus group told us: “Home loans are confusing, that’s why I use a broker”.

Banks were not seen as particularly trustworthy.

Some people did see big banks as safer to borrow from.

But some also found them inflexible, unhelpful and expensive.

Our study found more people who took a home loan through a broker were confident they had chosen the best loan, compared to those who’d dealt directly with a home lender.

Yet we also discovered people who used brokers actually ended up with less understanding of home loans than those who’d dealt with a lender themselves.

It suggests one downside of Australia’s growing reliance on brokers: the potential impact on financial literacy about borrowing we’ll be paying off for decades.