Four demographic forces reshaping broker opportunity

Ryan Harkness, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer – ORDE Financial

Australia's biggest demographic shifts are converging at once – and they're all pointing towards mortgage brokers. The wind is at your back. What matters now is how you use it.

In ORDE Financial’s Outlook Australia research*, developed alongside demographer Bernard Salt AM, the next 10 years are described as a potential ‘golden era’ for growth and prosperity in Australia. Even against a backdrop of global uncertainty, there are positive signals for brokers.

By 2036, Australia's population will grow by 3+ million people, largely through immigration, and they'll all need housing. Our seven million millennials will enter their 40s looking for a family-sized forever home. And a growing number of working Australians will be managing complex or uncertain income streams – whether they're self-employed tradies, professional contractors or juggling aged care and health shift work.

These borrowers increasingly fall outside traditional bank lending criteria. They need a trusted mortgage broker to help them navigate their options.

Here are four compelling trends shaping the decade ahead.

1. The great skills shift

The way Australians earn income is more flexible – and more complex – than ever before. Over the past 25 years, the workforce has shifted strongly towards higher‑skilled, better‑paid professional roles, including health, IT, engineering and consulting, with the professional workforce growing by more than 140%. The tradie workforce is also expanding – although at around 50,000 per year, it’s still not enough.

What these groups have in common is often strong earning potential paired with non‑traditional income structures. Around one in five tradies now operate as owner‑managers, while the fastest‑growing job category – aged and disability carers – regularly work casual shifts across multiple employers. Increasingly, income strength doesn’t fit neatly into standard payslip models.

At ORDE, we’re seeing a growing cohort of prime borrowers turned away by banks – not because of credit quality, but because flexible work arrangements or evolving financial profiles fall outside rigid credit appetites.

It's a more complex financial picture, yes. But the business-owner borrower is here to stay – and they need commercial finance, as well as home loans.

The opportunity for brokers: As Australia’s workforce shifts towards higher‑skilled professionals, tradies, business owners and multi‑employer workers, more borrowers have strong incomes but complex financial profiles – making it critical for brokers to tell the full client story.

2. The resilience of the commercial heartland

Your next client might be investing in Brisbane – even if they're sitting across from you in Parramatta. Increasingly, investment property purchases are happening across state borders.

Here’s what’s giving them confidence: the significant infrastructure and commercial investment already underway in Australia’s major growth corridors. We’re seeing this play out across the country.

Take the east coast. Victoria remains one of the strongest long-term growth markets in the country. With $52 billion in commercial and industrial approvals from 2022-2025, Melbourne’s population is projected to exceed Sydney’s in the next 10 years. Right now, it’s one of the more affordable major Australian cities as it sprawls west. Meanwhile, Sydney’s investment is skewed towards its southwest. And with the 2032 Brisbane Olympics on the horizon, Brisbane is investing in its airport precinct, tunnels and rail.

The opportunity for brokers: This shift is creating a clear opportunity for brokers to guide clients through increasingly borderless lending needs, as investors look beyond their home state to major growth corridors backed by large-scale infrastructure and commercial investment.

3. Diversity shaping Australia’s growth

Australia’s borrower landscape is increasingly multicultural. Almost a third of Australians are born overseas. And they’re not just buying homes, they’re building businesses and investing in their communities.

They’re also reshaping the great Australian dream. Just as Greek and Italian communities helped normalise alfresco spaces, today’s multigenerational households often prefer dual master bedrooms.

These borrowers depend on a broker’s guidance through unfamiliar financial systems. Not every borrower has long local financial histories, but you can help them build a credible position with the right solutions – including non-resident and foreign income loans.

The opportunity for brokers: As borrower needs, living preferences and financial profiles become more diverse, brokers are well placed to guide clients through increasingly complex lending pathways and match them with the right solutions.

4. Millennials on the move and into their 40s

First home buyers have long been a primary source of broker business – but that’s shifting. Around 7 million Australians are millennials entering their 40s and their forever home years.

That purchase carries more emotional weight than a first home. It's not just a property – it's the suburb where their children will grow. The house with room for LEGO, bikes and birthday parties.

It often involves two transactions – selling their first home and buying their next – which makes timing genuinely stressful.

Also, over the next two decades, baby boomers will transfer $5+ trillion in wealth – injecting more capital into this segment. As grandparents look to free up equity and gift deposits to their millennial children, financial advisers and accountants become valuable referral partners for brokers.

The opportunity for brokers: This creates an opportunity for brokers to deeply understand lending products that support clients through changing life stages – from construction and bridging finance to more tailored solutions – and provide confident guidance during major, often stressful decisions.

Make the most of this momentum

The question isn't whether these borrowers will need help – they will. The question is whether they'll find their way to you. Australia is changing, and so is our credit landscape. Are you ready to change with it?

Download ORDE’s Outlook Australia report here

*ORDE commissioned Bernard Salt and The Demographics Group to analyse demographic and economic trends shaping the next decade for lenders and brokers.