We built an RSU calculator. Here’s why.

The bank doesn’t see your income the way you do.

Alex Pagonis

The bank doesn’t see your income the way you do.

If you work in tech and earn RSUs, there’s a good chance the bank doesn’t see your income the way you do.

You might be earning $350k in total comp. The bank might assess you at $180k. That’s not a rounding error. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in borrowing power that disappears because most lenders just don’t have a framework for assessing equity compensation.

We see this every week at Alcove Tech. Senior engineers, product leaders, and technical staff at companies like Google, Atlassian, Amazon, and Meta. All earning well above what the bank is willing to lend on.

So we built a tool to make it visible.

What RSU Lending is

RSU Lending (rsulending.com.au) is a free calculator and resource hub we built at Alcove Tech. It’s designed for tech professionals who are paid in RSUs and want to understand how that income translates to borrowing power in Australia.

You input your company, the number of shares you’ve vested, and the current share price. It shows you three things:

Your RSU income summary. What your vested shares are actually worth on a per-annum basis, including the two-year average that most lenders use for assessment.

How lenders assess it. Most banks don’t recognise RSU income at all. The calculator shows you how a lender that does accept RSUs would assess yours, so you can see the gap between being assessed on base salary alone versus your actual income.

Your estimated additional borrowing power. The dollar figure that RSU income could add to your borrowing capacity on top of your base salary.

Why we built it

Every client conversation we have starts with some version of the same question: “I earn RSUs. Does that count?”

The answer is complicated. It depends on which lender you go to, how long you’ve been vesting, whether the shares are in a publicly listed company, and how the income is documented. Most brokers don’t know the answer. Most banks have a blanket policy that either ignores RSUs or heavily discounts them.

There was no tool that helped someone understand this before they walked into a broker’s office or applied with a bank. You either knew someone who’d been through it, or you found out the hard way when your application came back at half the amount you expected.

We wanted to change that. The calculator gives you a clear, honest view of where you stand before you talk to anyone. Including us.

How banks assess RSU income in Australia

This is the part most people don’t know, and honestly it’s the reason the calculator exists.

When you earn a salary, the bank takes it at face value. $150k salary equals $150k of assessed income. Simple.

RSUs don’t work that way. Banks treat them as variable income, which means they apply discounts, averages, and conditions. Here’s how it typically breaks down.

Most lenders don’t have a policy for RSU income at all. It’s not that they discount it. They simply don’t recognise it. Your application gets assessed on base salary only, and the RSU income you earn every quarter doesn’t exist as far as the bank is concerned. This is the reality for the majority of lenders in Australia.

A small number of lenders will assess RSU income, typically by taking a percentage of your two-year vested average. The exact methodology varies, but this is the best-case scenario in the current market and it’s the one that changes outcomes. Even a partial recognition of RSU income can add $100-200k+ in borrowing power compared to a lender that ignores it entirely.

The point isn’t that there’s a huge range of RSU-friendly lenders to choose from. There isn’t. The point is that knowing which ones will assess it, and how to present your vesting history to them, is the difference between borrowing on your full income and borrowing on half of it.

This is why lender selection matters more for tech professionals than almost any other type of borrower. The right lender doesn’t just get you a better rate. They see more of your income.

What the calculator tells you that a broker might not

Most brokers will run your numbers through one or two lenders they’re familiar with and come back with a borrowing power figure. If those lenders don’t assess RSU income at all, you’ll get a low number and assume that’s your ceiling.

The calculator shows you what happens when your RSU income is actually recognised. For most people, it’s $100-200k+ in additional borrowing power that they didn’t know was on the table.

It also shows your RSU income as a per-annum figure, which is how lenders look at it. Most people think about RSUs in terms of total grant value or share price. The bank thinks about it as annual income. The calculator translates between the two.

Real outcomes

Since building the tool, we’ve used the methodology behind it to help dozens of tech professionals buy property. A few examples.

Google engineer, single, Sydney. $134k base salary. $47k in annual RSU income. Most lenders assessed income at base only. We found one that assessed the full RSU and bonus income. Max purchase price went from ~$900k to $1.3M.

Atlassian + Canva couple, QLD. Combined bases of ~$274k plus ~$59k in RSU income. Wanted to buy a $1.2M investment without selling their home. Without RSU income counted, they couldn’t do it. With the right lender, they purchased the investment, refinanced to a better rate, and kept a $450k buffer for renovations.

Atlassian employee, portfolio expansion. $220k base plus ~$70k RSU income. Wanted a third property but borrowing power fell short without RSUs. We consolidated their $2.3M in existing loans from multiple splits into four clean facilities and funded an $850k investment purchase.

In every case, the RSU income was the difference between “can’t do it” and “done.”

Who it’s for

The calculator is for anyone in Australia earning RSUs as part of their compensation. That includes employees at publicly listed companies like Google, Atlassian, Amazon, Meta, Uber, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Apple. If you’re at a listed company with a standard RSU vesting structure, it’ll work for you.

If you’re at a pre-IPO company with unlisted options or ESOPs, the calculator won’t apply directly. But we work with those income types too. Reach out and we can talk through your specific scenario.