Not all debt is to be avoided. Here’s how to know if you’re taking on the good kind.  There’s ‘good debt’ and ‘bad debt’. One can speed up your path to financial freedom, while the other can ruin your chances just as quickly. The easiest way to tell whether you have good or bad debt has nothing to do with the debt itself and everything to do with what you spend ...

There are many ways you can get a home loan. You could simply walk into your local bank or visit a lender. You could look online and apply for a home loan without leaving the comfort of your couch. Or you could seek the services of a mortgage broker. But why should you? What do they actually do for you and what are the benefits? A mortgage broker acts as an intermediary between borrowers and lend ...

Economists from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of Sydney have co-authored a new study that challenges conventional thinking about auctions and is applicable to real-life bidding situations including property auctions. The study suggested that the more bidders there are in an auction, the lower each individual bidder perceives their probability of winning, which has a ...

When you purchase a residential property, whether as an investment or your own home, there are certain standard conditions included in the Contract of Sale. The ‘cooling off period’ is one such clause, which essentially gives you the ability to rescind on the contract without losing your deposit, so long as you provide written notice that you’re invoking the cooling off period before 5pm ...

Cross-collateralisation is an important loan structuring issue of which many property investors are not aware. Knowing the implications of cross-collateralisation is crucial to developing a long-term property investment portfolio. What is cross-collateralisation? Cross-collateralisation occurs when more than one property is used to secure a loan or multiple loans. For example, a person owns Prop ...

Which home loan is right for you? How can you tell when there’s so many different lenders, loan types and features to choose from? How can you compare loans properly when you’re not sure what you should be comparing? Finding the right home loan for your situation is a process that can be confusing, particularly for first-timers. In this article, we give you a basic guide for making home loan c ...

‘Genuine savings’ is a term used by lenders to define funds that a home loan applicant has saved themselves over time. In recent times, Australian lenders have required borrowers to save at least 5% of the purchase price of a property in a bank account in their name. What is classified as genuine savings? The following types of savings are considered to be genuine savings if they add up to be ...

When buying a home, it’s good to know how to accurately estimate the value of the properties you’re interested in. It’s difficult, however, to find accurate advice and there is a lot of conflicting information from the media and real estate agents. This page is a quick guide to help you learn the process of valuing a residential property. The market value of a property is the price that woul ...

With most of Australia’s lenders tweaking their investment lending policy and pricing in a bid to curb their level of investment growth, many potential investors are finding it harder than ever to obtain finance. As a result, new data suggests there are now a growing number of potential investors choosing to turn their home into an investment property and buy another owner-occupied dwelling. ...

A low deposit home loan lets you borrow more than 80% of a property’s value.  It might only require a 5% deposit and let you buy your property sooner. How small can my deposit be? The standard deposit size for most lenders is 20% of the property’s value. In other words, borrowers need a loan-to-value ratio (LVR) of 80%. Low deposit loans come with an LVR of 90 or 95%. This means you ...