Home Loans

Upgrading the kitchen or starting from the slab? Construction finance works differently to a standard mortgage, with staged payments and special lender conditions. We guide you through each draw-down, liaise with your builder and keep the budget on track. That way, you focus on the build while we secure the funds on terms that suit your timeline and cash flow.

The offset account most people are using wrong

ASIC found in 2026 that Australian mortgage holders are collectively missing out on millions in offset savings — not because the product is bad, but because accounts are set up incorrectly, sit unused, or the borrower was never shown how they work. Your bank has no incentive to raise it with you.

An offset account reduces the balance your interest is calculated on. Park $30,000 in an offset against a $600,000 loan and you pay interest on $570,000. Every dollar sitting in a low-interest savings account instead of an offset is quietly costing you the difference between your savings rate and your mortgage rate — on current numbers that gap is substantial.

When we review a loan, this is one of the first things we check: is the offset actually linked, is your salary going into it, and are there multiple offsets available that you are not using. It costs nothing to fix and often saves more than switching lenders would.

Why your rate drifts up if you never ask

Lenders price new customers more sharply than existing ones. That is not a conspiracy, it is just how retention economics work — and it means the loan you negotiated three years ago is probably no longer priced where a new applicant would get it today.

The practical response is not automatically to refinance. A repricing request to your existing lender, backed by a competitor's written offer, frequently gets most of the benefit without the cost and paperwork of moving. Refinancing makes sense when the gap is large enough, when your circumstances have changed, or when you need features your current lender does not offer.

We check client loans against the market periodically rather than waiting for you to notice. A rate that drifts 0.4% above market on a $600,000 loan is roughly $2,400 a year — real money for a phone call.

What determines how much you can borrow

Serviceability and the buffer

Lenders assess you at roughly 3% above the actual rate to test whether you could still repay if rates rose. This is why the amount you can borrow is often lower than you expected, and why lenders differ — each applies its own assessment rate, living expense benchmarks and treatment of existing debts.

Deposit, LVR and LMI

Under a 20% deposit you generally pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance, which protects the lender, not you. It can still be worth paying if it gets you into the market sooner in a rising market. There are also government schemes and lender exemptions for certain professions — worth checking before you assume LMI is unavoidable.

Existing commitments

Credit card limits count against you at their limit, not their balance. A card you never use with a $20,000 limit can reduce your borrowing capacity by a meaningful amount. Buy now pay later accounts are increasingly assessed too. Cleaning this up before applying often matters more than shopping for a slightly better rate.