Want to help your kids buy a house? Start here

March 29, 2026 — 5:00am

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Most of us are familiar with Australia’s banking oligopoly, where the big four – ANZ, CBA, Westpac and NAB – take up the lion’s share of the market for Australian bank accounts, mortgage lending, and three-letter acronyms.

What you may be less aware of (or acutely aware of, depending on your age), is that there’s one more major lender that you won’t find on the boards of the ASX or at your local shopping centre. That’s the bank of mum and dad, resplendent with its own acronym: BOMAD.

This “bank” – calculated in 2020 to be the fifth-biggest lender in the country – doesn’t come with APRA-enforced regulations or strict responsible lending requirements. In fact, it comes with almost no rule book at all, which, with 60 per cent of first homeowners receiving help from their parents, is problematic to say the least.

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Parents, many of whom lived in the halcyon days of $500 townhouses or however cheap they were (do NOT........

© The Age