Home Loan Eligibility Criteria 2026: SBI, HDFC, ICICI and All Major Banks

What banks actually look at when deciding home loan eligibility criteria

Most eligibility guides start with the CIBIL score and stop there. The score is important, but it is one input into a calculation that banks call the credit appraisal. The full appraisal considers six factors, and understanding all six is what lets you prepare in the right order before you walk into a branch.

• CIBIL score. The credit score from TransUnion CIBIL, Experian, Equifax, or CRIF Highmark. Most banks want 750 or above for the best rates. Scores between 650 and 749 may still get approved, but at higher rates or with co-applicant requirements. Below 650, approval becomes difficult at most private banks.
• Fixed obligation to income ratio (FOIR). The total of all your existing EMIs plus the proposed home loan EMI, as a percentage of your net monthly take-home. Most banks cap this at 50 to 55 percent. If you earn Rs 80,000 a month and already pay Rs 15,000 in car loan EMI, your available EMI capacity is Rs 28,000 to Rs 29,000 (55 percent of Rs 80,000 minus Rs 15,000). That becomes the ceiling for your home loan EMI, which in turn caps the loan amount.
• Age and remaining working years. The loan tenure cannot extend beyond your retirement age (60 for salaried, 65 for self-employed). A 50-year-old salaried borrower can only take a 10-year tenure, which significantly raises the EMI and reduces the eligible loan amount at a given income.
• Employment type and stability. Salaried borrowers get better terms than self-employed because their income is easier to verify. Government employees get the best terms at PSU banks. Self-employed borrowers typically need 3 years of profitable ITR filings.
• Loan-to-value ratio (LTV). RBI’s 2026 framework: 90 percent LTV up to Rs 30 lakh, 80 percent up to Rs 75 lakh, 75 percent above Rs 75 lakh. Higher down payments increase approval probability because they reduce the bank’s credit risk.
• Property valuation and legal clearance. The bank will independently value the property. If the valuer’s figure is below your agreed purchase price, the bank lends against the valuer’s figure, not the agreed price. A clean title, valid RERA registration, and a project on the bank’s approved list all improve the process.

Home loan eligibility criteria at SBI in 2026

SBI is the first comparison point for most borrowers because it offers the lowest starting rates among major lenders. The minimum eligibility thresholds as of June 2026:

• Age: 18 to 70 years (for a repayment period ending at 70 maximum)
• CIBIL score: 750 or above for the floor rate; lower scores considered at higher spreads
• Net monthly income (salaried): no published minimum, but Rs 25,000 per month is where approvals become routine
• Employment: salaried for at least 2 years, or self-employed with 3 years of profitable ITR
• LTV: follows RBI slab (90 percent up to Rs 30L, 80 percent up to Rs 75L, 75 percent above)
• Maximum tenure: 30 years
• Processing fee: 0.35 percent of loan amount (minimum Rs 2,000, maximum Rs 10,000 for most categories)

SBI’s YONO platform allows pre-approval offers for existing SBI salary-account holders, which can accelerate disbursal by two to three weeks for projects on the bank’s approved-developer list.

Home loan eligibility criteria at HDFC, ICICI, LIC Housing Finance and Canara Bank

Private banks tend to be more flexible on self-employed income documentation but charge a higher spread above the repo rate.

• HDFC Bank. Minimum CIBIL: 700 (strict at 750 for floor rate). Fast digital disbursal for salary account holders. Processing: up to 0.50 percent. Strong project-approval list in metro cities, which benefits buyers purchasing in new launches.
• ICICI Bank. Minimum CIBIL: 700. Offers step-up EMI for young borrowers where EMI starts lower and rises in proportion to expected salary growth. Pre-approved home loan offers for existing ICICI customers with clean repayment history.
• LIC Housing Finance. Floor rate approximately 8.50 to 8.65 percent. No prepayment penalty on floating-rate loans. Maximum tenure 30 years, making it popular among older borrowers (50-plus) who want to maximise tenure to keep EMI manageable. Common choice for NRIs because of the company’s historical NRI-specific documentation comfort.
• Canara Bank. Floor rate approximately 8.65 percent. Well-established in Karnataka for buyers of projects where Canara is an approved lender. CIBIL threshold similar to SBI.

For a side-by-side comparison of current rates and eligibility calculators across all these lenders, the Urban Money home loan eligibility calculator runs the appraisal logic against multiple lenders simultaneously.

Joint home loan eligibility: how combining two incomes changes the loan amount

This is the section most online eligibility guides skip. Joint home loans are one of the most effective ways to increase your eligible loan amount, because the bank adds both incomes to the repayment capacity calculation.

A worked example. Suresh earns Rs 90,000 net per month. Kavitha earns Rs 75,000 net. Neither has existing EMIs. At 55 percent FOIR, Suresh’s individual EMI capacity is Rs 49,500. Kavitha’s is Rs 41,250. Taking a loan individually, Suresh at 8.75 percent over 20 years can borrow approximately Rs 55.9 lakh. Kavitha can borrow approximately Rs 46.6 lakh. Taking a joint home loan, their combined EMI capacity is Rs 90,750. That translates to an eligible loan amount of approximately Rs 1.02 crore at 8.75 percent for 20 years. The joint structure adds roughly Rs 45 lakh to the eligible ceiling compared to Suresh’s individual application.

Two conditions must be met for both co-borrowers to claim the full income benefit. Both must be co-owners of the property (named in the sale deed). And both must be co-applicants on the loan (named in the loan agreement and responsible for repayment).

An important nuance: if one co-applicant has a low CIBIL score, adding them may not help and could hurt. Banks take the lower of the two CIBIL scores as the weaker profile and may price the loan at a higher rate, or decline altogether. Check both scores before deciding to add a co-applicant. Our how to improve home loan eligibility guide covers what to do if either score needs work before you apply.

The Hyderabad couple who unlocked Rs 45 lakh more

This is one of the most common conversations at our Gachibowli office.

They were both software engineers at a Hyderabad financial-tech firm, married two years, renting in Kondapur, and shortlisting 2 BHK apartments in Tellapur at around Rs 95 lakh. Both were 31. Suresh’s CIBIL was 778. Kavitha’s was 741. They had no existing loans. They had assumed they could not afford the Tellapur property because the home loan calculator at SBI had shown Suresh eligible for only Rs 55 lakh on his income alone.

The advisor ran the joint eligibility calculation in fifteen minutes. Combined income of Rs 1.65 lakh per month. 55 percent FOIR. Combined EMI capacity of Rs 90,750. At SBI’s 8.50 percent floor rate for 20 years, that translated to Rs 1.06 crore eligible. The Tellapur property at Rs 95 lakh was suddenly comfortably within reach, with a down payment of Rs 23.75 lakh (25 percent LTV above Rs 75 lakh).

“We had spent two months thinking we could not afford Tellapur. We had only run the calculator on Suresh’s income. The Square Yards advisor ran the joint calculation in fifteen minutes and showed us we were eligible for Rs 1.06 crore together. We moved in four months later. The one thing nobody told us was to run the joint number first.”

A small note on this story. The buyers’ real names and a few identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of our customers. The story and the outcome are real, shared with the buyers’ written consent.

How to calculate your home loan eligibility in three steps

Before you walk into any bank, run these three steps yourself.

• Step 1: Calculate your available EMI capacity. Take your net monthly take-home. Multiply by 55 percent (or 50 percent if you want to be conservative). Subtract any existing EMI payments. The result is your available EMI budget for the home loan.
• Step 2: Convert EMI capacity to loan amount. Use the Square Yards EMI calculator. Enter your EMI budget as the EMI output. Enter the rate you expect (8.50 to 9.00 percent depending on your profile). Enter your preferred tenure. The calculator will back-calculate the loan amount that produces that EMI.
• Step 3: Check the LTV constraint. RBI caps LTV at 90 percent up to Rs 30L, 80 percent up to Rs 75L, and 75 percent above. Divide the property price by the LTV percentage to confirm you have enough for the down payment. If the down payment exceeds your savings, the loan amount is LTV-constrained, not FOIR-constrained.

For follow-on reading, our how to calculate home loan EMI guide breaks down the formula and gives EMI tables for SBI, HDFC, ICICI and other major lenders. Our salary required to buy a flat guide frames the eligibility question from the income side, which is often the more intuitive starting point.