How One Tech Professional Turned RSUs Into An Alexandria Warehouse Home

Most tech professionals think their RSUs make buying in Alexandria easy. In practice, the shares often confuse bank credit teams more than they help. This case study walks through how we used a senior engineer’s RSUs to buy a warehouse-style loft in Alexandria – and, just as importantly, how we made sure he wouldn’t be forced to sell if his employer’s share price crashed.

In simple terms: you can use RSU income and vested shares to support a home loan, but you should never rely on them to meet your core repayments. Treat them as capital and upside, not rent and groceries.

The client: high salary, big RSUs, small window

Tom (not his real name) is a 33‑year‑old senior engineer at a global tech company with a Sydney office near Green Square. On paper, his numbers looked fantastic:

• Base salary: $230,000 + super
• RSUs vesting quarterly: current year value about $120,000 (at today’s share price)
• Annual bonus: target 15% of base, historically between $20,000–$40,000
• Savings: $260,000 in cash and ETFs
• Existing HECS-HELP debt: $18,000
• No other loans or credit cards

He’d fallen in love with a 1‑bedroom, warehouse-style conversion in Alexandria with exposed brick, high ceilings and a mezzanine study. The asking price was $1.25m.

The catch? The company’s share price had already been through a 30% wobble in the last 18 months. Tom knew his RSUs made him look rich today, but he also knew it could vanish on paper very quickly.

What he wanted from me was blunt: “Can I buy this without betting my future on our stock price?”

What I tell tech clients about RSUs and home loans

Here’s the framework I use for almost every tech professional near Alexandria and Green Square who has RSUs or options:

1. Base salary is your only ‘must rely on’ income.
2. RSUs and bonuses are capital, not core income. They should fund buffers, lump‑sum repayments and investing – not everyday repayments.
3. The bank’s maximum is not your maximum. For high‑income professionals I strongly prefer total home + investment repayments stay around 30–35% of after‑tax income, even if a lender would let you go higher (see also /insights/doctors-lawyers-high-income-professionals-specialist-broker-benefits).
4. APRA’s 3% buffer is a minimum, not a safety guarantee. You still need your own internal speed limits and cash buffer.

The mistake I see most is people stretching to the property they can just qualify for if you fully count RSUs and bonuses as income. That’s fine when markets are hot and jobs are secure. It’s brutal the first time your vesting shrinks or your bonus disappears.

Step 1: Translate RSUs into ‘bank language’

Different lenders treat RSUs in very different ways. Some ignore them entirely. Some will average the last two years. Some want a 3‑year track record. A few will look forward to existing grant schedules.

For Tom, our first job was to document his income properly:

• Employment contract showing base salary and bonus structure
• RSU grant letters and vesting schedules
• History of vestings and sale transactions for the last 2+ years
• Recent payslips and year‑to‑date summary capturing RSU income where it flowed through payroll
• Last two tax returns and ATO notices of assessment

We modelled three scenarios:

1. Base salary only – RSUs and bonus ignored
2. Base + conservative RSUs – 60–70% of historical RSU income counted
3. Base + full RSU + bonus – maximum lender recognition

On Tom’s numbers:

• Base salary after tax (approx): $145,000 p.a. or ~$12,080/month
• Historical RSU income after tax (approx): $70,000 p.a. or ~$5,830/month
• Average bonus after tax (approx): $18,000 p.a. or ~$1,500/month

Using the internal guideline from other high‑income case studies (/insights/self-employed-professional-buys-rose-bay-complex-income), we aimed to keep total repayments around 30–32% of base salary after tax.

That gave us an internal repayment “speed limit” near:

• 32% × $12,080 ≈ $3,865/month

This was our real borrowing anchor, even before we opened any bank calculators.

Step 2: Price the apartment and the loan – safely

The warehouse apartment was listed at $1.25m. Based on local sales, we estimated a realistic purchase price between $1.21m–$1.24m.

Tom wanted to keep some of his ETF portfolio intact and avoid going too close to 90% LVR (where Lenders Mortgage Insurance kicks in hard). We sketched three options:

We also estimated purchase costs (stamp duty, legals, inspections, adjustments) at around $55k–$60k.

Tom’s first instinct was Scenario C: lower cash outlay, keep more ETFs. On a ~6.3% variable P&I rate (indicative only), a $1.05m loan over 30 years meant repayments of about $6,460/month.

Immediately, that clashed with our internal limit of ~$3,865/month on base income only.

Even at a sharper 5.8% rate, repayments would still sit around $6,150/month. That’s more than 50% of Tom’s base salary after tax – well into the zone Roy Morgan classifies as elevated mortgage stress when you look at repayment‑to‑income ratios.

So we pivoted: instead of asking “How can we make Scenario C work?”, we asked “What loan size keeps repayments under ~32% of base pay, even if rates move up again?”

Working backwards on a 6.3% stress rate, a monthly repayment of $3,865 translated into a loan of roughly $620k–$640k.

That meant either:

• A much cheaper property, or
• A larger deposit so the loan stayed down near that level.

Tom’s response was refreshing: “I don’t want to be a mortgage stress statistic. Let’s see if we can stretch the deposit instead.”