Buying a home in Australia? Your lender will likely require a bank valuation to calculate the loan to value ratio (LVR) of your home loan. Bank valuations help lenders weigh up the risk of lending. A higher LVR means more risk for the lender, which could impact the amount you may be able to borrow. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the factors making up a bank valuation, as well as the impact they can have on your borrowing capacity.

Whether you’re working from home out of necessity or using your home as your principal place of business, it’s important you’re clear on both the tax implications – Capital Gains Tax on the sale of your property - and tax deductions that could impact you. Here’s a guide to each of these scenarios.

From electricity bills to phone plans, car insurance through to home loans, sticking with the same provider year after year could mean you’re paying “lazy tax”. Lazy tax is the penalty many consumers and homeowners are paying as a result of being complacent, not shopping around for the best interest rates, and failing to refinance when rates work in their favour. If this sounds like you, here are two ways to avoid paying lazy tax.

Getting a home loan with a redraw facility is a useful and flexible financial tool. Any extra funds you pay into your home loan, can be withdrawn when needed, to cover emergencies or pay for unplanned expenses. At the same time, those extra funds save you money too, as any extra repayments on your loan also lower how much interest you’re charged. To find out if a redraw would suit your home loan, here’s more on how a redraw facility works.

Buying a first home is a significant milestone that takes commitment to saving, careful decision making, and considered planning. The biggest hurdle for most first home buyers? Saving a deposit. Depending on where you are in Australia, it can take as long as eight years to save enough, all the while chasing down rising house prices which means having to save even more! If you are ready to buy your first home, here are a few things to consider.

Building a new home is a complex project and there are many decisions to be made before the project even begins. From the style of architecture, to the floor plan and layout; bathroom and kitchen fixtures and fittings; right through to flooring, paint, countertops and cupboard handles. But the most important – and usually the first – decision that needs to be made when building a new home is who to go for financing. Should you use your builder’s broker or work with your own broker?

Normally, each year thousands of Australian expats, foreign nationals and temporary residents plan to buy property in Australia. 2020 saw a lot of Australians wanting to return home and, whilst foreign migration numbers were largely affected by our closed borders, Australia which is viewed as a safe country that handled COVID-19 well, is now expecting to see the large numbers return when our international borders reopen.

Whilst lending policy for non-resident home loans differs from bank to bank, a number of non-bank lenders also offer competitive financial products suitable for non-residents who want to purchase, build, renovate, improve or refinance a residential property. Read on to find out more about non-residents buying property in Australia.

Property auctions can be a good way to buy your next home or investment property, provided you know what you’re doing. Unlike a private sale where buyers can add conditions to a contract – like a finance or building inspection condition – when it comes to auctions, buyers have to do their due diligence before they even bid. If you are planning to bid at an auction, it’s important you’re prepared. Check out these 5 tips to get auction ready.

In the last year, a year that none of us could have predicted, with lockdowns and closures of many different industries, affected mortgage-holders were able to put up their hands and ask for the assistance offered by most of the Australian Banks and Lending institutions. It was help that was very needed and very timely.

Have you been concerned about your credit file not being as healthy as it should be? Did you spend more than you wanted at Christmas or are you finding balancing your finances harder after a tough 2020? The fact is a poor or lower credit rating can impact your future borrowing or mean you are charged higher interest rates for any new lending. If your credit file needs some repair, here are 5 steps you can take to help that situation and get back on track.