Say your deposit lands in your account exactly as required, sourced from a recent transfer from a parent. On paper, the money is there. To a lender assessing your loan, that is not the same thing as a deposit you saved yourself over time, and it can change what they ask of you next.
What "genuine savings" actually means
Genuine savings is a lender's term for money you have accumulated or held over a period, and can show a paper trail for. Lenders want evidence that you can save consistently, with statements showing how the money built up before you apply. Regular transfers into a savings account or a term deposit that has sat untouched are easier to explain than one balance appearing without history. The common thread is evidence: records that show the balance building up, rather than a single number appearing.
The word "genuine" is doing real work here. The lender is looking for a visible saving habit in your own transaction history: money set aside and left alone. A deposit that turns up all at once, from an unclear or unverifiable source, does not show that habit, even if the dollar figure is identical.
Why lenders look at it
A deposit is more than the entry fee to a purchase. Lenders treat the way you assembled it as a preview of how you will handle the mortgage afterwards. Someone who has demonstrably saved a portion of their income, consistently, over a stretch of time has shown they can live within a budget that leaves money left over. That is precisely the discipline a home loan demands for years afterwards.
Genuine savings also helps a lender sanity-check the numbers. If your income and spending patterns do not plausibly add up to the deposit you are presenting, that is a discrepancy worth understanding before they lend against it. A visible savings history closes that gap. A one-off deposit, on its own, does not.
What usually counts and what usually does not
There is no single industry list, because this is lender policy rather than a fixed rule, but the general shape is consistent across most lenders:
- Usually counts: money built up in a savings or transaction account over time, term deposits held for a stretch, and shares or managed funds you have owned for a while, all backed by statements showing the accumulation.
- Often needs extra work: an inheritance, a gift, a grant, proceeds from selling an asset, or any lump sum that appears without a visible build-up. These are not automatically excluded. They tend to trigger requests for further evidence, or need to sit in your account for a period before a lender will treat them the same as savings you accumulated yourself.
Because this sits in each lender's own credit policy rather than in legislation, what counts and how a lump sum is treated differs from lender to lender. Two applicants with identical deposits, saved and sourced the same way, can get different treatment depending on who is assessing them.
If a gift or inheritance makes up part of your deposit, expect a lender to ask more of it than they would of savings you built yourself. That can mean some written confirmation from the giver that the money is a gift and not a loan you are expected to repay, evidence of the funds actually moving into your account, and sometimes a period of the money sitting there before it counts toward your deposit. Exactly what is required differs enough between lenders that it is worth asking early, rather than assuming one lender's approach will apply everywhere.
How to build it
The practical implication is straightforward: start early, and keep it visible. Set up a dedicated savings account and pay into it regularly, even in modest amounts, rather than moving money around unpredictably. Avoid large, unexplained deposits into that account if you can, since a big unlabelled transfer can undo the clean pattern a lender wants to see. Keep statements accessible so you are not scrambling to reconstruct months of history when you apply.
If part of your deposit comes from an employer bonus, tax return, or the sale of something you own, keep a simple record of where it came from. It does not need to be complicated, but it does need to be traceable.
How to use this
Before you get deep into house hunting, ask any lender you are considering how they define genuine savings, what proportion of your deposit they expect it to cover, and how they treat gifts or windfalls if that applies to you. None of this is set by a regulator, so the answer genuinely changes depending on who you ask. Getting that answer early, rather than after you have found a place, is what keeps a strong deposit from becoming a paperwork problem at the worst possible time.