How to Choose the Right Loan
Today, we delve in to home loans. How to choose the right loan for you.
HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM TODAY’S EPISODE:
- Mortgage terminology;
- Fixed vs variable loans;
- Comparing loans;
- Comparison sites, banks, and mortgage brokers; And
- Much More
LINKS OR ARTICLES WE MENTIONED:
- None
SPEAKERS IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Michelle May – Sydney Buyers Agent
Marcus Roberts – Mortgage Broker
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- Have a money question you want us to answer? ask@sydneypropertyinsider.com.au
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Please note that any views or opinions presented in this podcast are solely those of the speakers, and do not necessarily represent those of any business. These views and opinions are general in nature, and do not take account of your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. Please consider whether it applies in your circumstances and seek professional advice wherever appropriate.
Transcript
| Marcus Roberts: | Hi, and welcome to the Sydney Property Insider podcast. This is episode four, and today we are talking about finding the right loan. So there’s lots of home loans out there. How do you navigate through the home loan maze and find what is right and what is suitable for you. |
| Hi Michelle, how are you today? | |
| Michelle May: | Good, how are you? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Good, good good good. This week we were just talking prior to coming on air about … And this is certainly nothing new in the last week, sort of new over the last couple of years thing. Groups of neighbors rigging together and doing what developers have been doing for years, so developers historically have bought property by property and then bulldozed everything to build a multi story block of flats. Just another story that we’ll provide a link to in the show notes, I’m real [inaudible], they’re a group of neighbors in McKory Fields that have said, “If we look at selling individually, we’re not going to make nearly as much as we would if we sold to developers one big ranch or one big parsel of land.” So that’s something I found really fascinating, being people bonding over selling to a big developer. |
| Michelle May: | Nothing like money [crosstalk] |
| Marcus Roberts: | All those neighborly feuds that you might have had over the years, they just go out the window when there’s the hope of pocketing two million dollars each in the equation. So we’ll put the link in the show notes, I just thought that was something really funny that tickled me this morning. So today we are talking about home loans, how do you navigate the maze? What are the different types of products out there, different types of aspects of each loan and how to really go about doing your research in finding what’s right for you? So Reed let’s start with you? How do you find the right loaner? What are your options in finding or sourcing loans? Being you can look at a bank, you can go straight into your local bank. If you walk into the commonwealth bank, I’m sure that you will walk out with a Commonwealth bank home loan because they’ll probably mention nothing else to you other than their own sorts of products. |
| You’ve also got comparison websites, you’ve got mortgage brokers, you’ve got online mortgage providers. There’s so many, so many choices out there and it’s good for consumers and it’s good for buyers because they have much more choice than they would have ten, fifteen years ago. | |
| Michelle May: | It’s interesting isn’t it because there’s so many options out there now. Sometimes you can’t see the woods through the trees, but what are the benefits of one versus the other? Going into a bank obviously, they’re only going to look at one thing. A broker would look at how many different lenders would they typically work with. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yeah, so full disclosure as mentioned, I am a mortgage broker, so this is what I do for a living. If you walk into a bank, as I said at the start of the show … if you walk into a West Pact Branch, you are going to walk out with a West Pact loan. West Pact will probably not mention anyone else to you, would probably not know the other providers know the ins and outs of. A mortgage broker, be it myself, be it a mortgage broker through one of the big eggreos or big groups like Ozzy or Mortgage Choice or a smaller non-aligned broker out there in the suburbs. They typically have 25 to 30 lenders, but they need to be across. So myself I know that the last five loans that we’ve done have been with five different providers and the reason for that is that each customer has a different set of needs and if you were an employee or if you were self employed or if you’re in contract work, it real depends on what you want out of a home loan. It will depend on what is the most suitable for you. |
| So really it comes down to choice, so seeing a broker means that you get access to 25 to 30 different lenders each with their own products and terms, versus going into a bank and being told that everyone fits in box A or box B. Being both branded with Nab on the outside. | |
| Michelle May: | So typically if you go to a broker, you treat someone from the web or you’ve got a friend who’s being helped with a great broker. You go to see them, what really are the questions that you can expect them to ask you to have ready to go with … To take with you into the appointment. What should you be prepared to ask? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Absolutely, so some of the great questions that I think you can ask … Probably be ready to ask are things like borrowing capacity and we speak on borrowing capacity in other episodes. But what is the purpose of the loan to start of with? So is it for yourself, is it for a investment? Where your borrowing power truly lies, so each bank will run off a different calculation so is it about finding the most maximum amount that you can possibly borrow or is it about finding something that works for your own budget and works for you day to day cash flow management purposes. Questions that your broker will most likely ask will include things like pay slips or evidence of income over the last couple of years. Simple things like your driver’s license, identification details, purpose of the loan. Being if you were buying an investment property, tell me about that. So are you looking for something that’s interest only or are you looking for something to reduce the mortgage over time? Even very simply a thing such as a fix vs variable. So having a variable ranked mortgage vs having a fixed or a combination of the two. What does that look like and why would you choose one over another? |
| Michelle May: | Okay, so tell me a bit more about the benefits between a variable or fixed rates. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yeah, absolutely. So variable rates … If you have done this extensively, in the past as we’ve known, you used to. But variable rates typically go in line with the reserve banks notes on the Tuesday of each month. So if the RBA sets the cash rate 25 basis points higher than it was the month before, you will typically expect that within the next week or within the next few weeks, the bank will up or increase their variable rate. The variable rate will go up or down as the reserve bank sets their own target catch rates. Whereas a fixed rate, you’re entering into an agreement with the lender to provide you with a mortgage and you pay a set amount based on a fixed rate every month or every fortnight for the coming 1,2,3,4,5 years typically. Which means that it provides stability for you knowing that you are not going to suddenly have to come up with more money next month because the rates have gone up, but it also has the down side of if rates go down you’re not receiving that benefit. |
| Michelle May: | Yeah, okay. So could you for example, if you wanted to benefit from any variable rates going down and you also want a bit of security, possibly think about splitting your loan. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yeah, so that’s something that we’re doing quite a bit now because one of the other features with the variable rate loan is that (I should have mentioned earlier) a variable rate loan you can usually pay down much easier than a fixed rate loan. So if you’ve just won lotto and you’ve won 50,000 dollars you can put that … |
| Michelle May: | Wouldn’t that be nice? |
| Marcus Roberts: | That’d be lovely, but you have to be in it to win it. So I don’t know that I’m going to win one of those any time soon. But ultimately if you have a win for $50,000 you can put that straight into the mortgage on a variable rate and it will reduce the mortgage by $50,000. Simply broadly speaking. One of the things that we’re doing more and more (depending on the clients and client circumstances and if it’s in their interest and if it makes sense to them) is to look at doing a combination of both. So with the fixed rate component, it stabilizes and it really evens out those payments every month, so you know exactly how much you’re paying on half of the mortgage and then the variable rate. If the variable rate goes up, then you’re only paying an increase on half of what you otherwise would have if you had a fully variable rate loan. |
| What a rig does is it smooths out your payments, but still gives you both the benefits of reduced rates as well as … Alternatively, the potential for paying a slight increase on any rate rises. However, what is very nice about that is it gives you that flexibility, so if you do have a new job or if you have unfortunately a redundancy payment or if you have an inheritance or something like that. You can pay down that variable component as quickly as possible which will again smooth out those payments on the overall loan over the rest of the term. | |
| Michelle May: | So can you make any extra payments on a fixed rate loan? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Look into the individual loan contract and speak to your broker about whether that is possible. So some banks will provide opportunities to increase payments, but broadly speaking, fixed rate is you’re paying $2,000 a month for the next five years on a fixed rate loan, that’s what you’re paying. |
| Michelle May: | Yeah, okay and so say you get that wind fall, which would be wonderful … But even if you pay extra, just a little bit. I don’t know 50 bucks a week or on your variable rate or even on your fixed rate if that’s an option. Does it make a big dent? Is it really true that you can cut years off your mortgage as they like to advertise? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yeah, look it certainly gets advertised a lot and for good reason. Certainly paying down your owner occupier debt which may be seen in the industry as bad debt seeing as there is no tax deduction for that owner occupier property lown that you have. Paying down that debt as quickly as possible is going to give you, broadly speaking, a better return to put in a savings account elsewhere. And even if you invest that 50 dollars a week or 50 dollars a month extra into something else, to shares or into acorns, into something similar then yes that may have growth, but you also will most likely be paying tax on that money. So it really comes down to your individual situation and looking to what is right for you. However, paying down owner occupier debt where possible and especially with slight adjustments, so looking at fortnight leery payments instead of monthly as well as putting in an extra $50 a month if possible. Can really help in lowering the amount of years it takes to pay off that loan and I’ll provide a couple of examples of that in the show notes so that you can have a look at it. |
| If there’s a calculator where you can put in an alternative amount [inaudible] loan if you have one. | |
| Michelle May: | Yeah because if that makes a big difference then you might want to think twice about having that second soy latte in the afternoon. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Exactly and back to baked beans on … You know you can really stretch it as far as the imagination goes if that is really important to you. |
| Michelle May: | Yeah and because it’s flexible, you’re not tied into paying the extra. It’s just when you can, as you can. |
| Marcus Roberts: | That’s right. Yeah. |
| Michelle May: | So then I had another question for you. I hear a lot about deposits and how much deposit you really need. Can you explain a little bit about minimum deposits? How banks like for you to have because obviously I know in Europe it’s been quite common to borrow up to 100%, 110% of what the property is worth which is maybe why they have been in such strife the last years. But in Australia, in New South Wales what do banks like you to have? |
| Marcus Roberts: | So the number that gets thrown out a lot is 20%. Now 20% of the purchase price, so if you were buying a million dollar property and you have $200,000 then the bank is theoretically is offering you $800,000. Boom! There is your 20%, what that doesn’t take into consideration, though, is other purchasing costs. So you have stamp duty costs, you have conveyance or solicitor costs as well. So making sure that you have more than that 20% to cover those costs is really beneficial because it’ll allow you to not be required to pay LMI. Which is Lenders Mortgage Insurance. Now yes you can, absolutely you can get a loan with less than a 20% deposit and there are situations where you still can do 100% lending on the purchase price, but there it comes with some huge draw backs and some huge costs associated with it. Which I can talk through. |
| Ultimately though, if you’ve never heard of LMI before, Lender Mortgage Insurance that you pay for the banks benefit. The bank is taking a risk on you as the borrower that you have less than 20% of the purchase price and they’re happy to lend you 90% if you only have 10%, but if you default on your loan or if you default on your obligations and can’t pay that loan back. Then the bank can go after the insurance provider and say, “Well look, Mr. and Mrs. Smith haven’t done what they said they would do. They’ve defaulted on their loan obligations, we’d like to make sure that we’re covered.” So the LMI can be a large cost, especially when you get to that 90% window. | |
| If you’re borrowing more than 89 to 90 percent of the purchase price, look at how much that LMI costs because predominantly or typically you cannot get that insurance premium back and it’s factored into and built into the cost of the loan when you set it up. So even if you sell that property in 18 months, that insurance that you’ve paid is not refundable. | |
| Michelle May: | Right. |
| Marcus Roberts: | And once you get to that 90% window LMI can be upwards of 2 to 2 and a half percent of the purchase price. |
| Michelle May: | Blimey, that’s a huge amount. Okay, so if you don’t have that 20%, you don’t want to pay the LMI. I mean 200,000 dollars is a lot of money to save up. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Absolutely. |
| Michelle May: | What other options do you have? |
| Marcus Roberts: | So you can … So the biggest one that you have … And this depends on your own circumstances and how happy you are with doing this and how happy they are doing this … Is using the back up amount of debt or very close family, typically mom and dad I say would be easiest, as a guarantor loan. So what that ultimately means is you John and Jeanette Smith, you go to John Smith’s mom and dad who have paid out their property long ago or paid up their debt long ago. And you say, “Mom, dad we really want to purchase, but we don’t have a deposit ready. Would you be happy going guarantor on our loan and putting your home in Bella Vista into the equation.” |
| Michelle May: | Right. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Banks love that because banks ultimately have … So maybe they have the place that they’re funding as well as a second source of repayment being another property into the equation, so the reason that works for the banks is they’re not lending against 80% of one property. They’re lending against 80% of that first property plus 10% of that first property, but with the recourse back to all of that second property. |
| Michelle May: | Alright, of course. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Now if you’re a mom and dad you want to … If you’re mom and dad listening to this you want to know … Okay so we’ve just paid off our mortgage where we don’t owe anyone anything and now we’re suddenly on the hook for John and Jeanette’s loan. Now yes it can be done if you’re John and Jeanette or you’re mom and dad, you would probably hope to pay that down to 80% as quickly as possible, so you can take mom and dad’s title deeds off the table. You can get that removed from the loan. |
| Michelle May: | So in the last couple of years, we’ve seen an enormous amount of growth in Sydney. You know 20, 30, 40 percent in capital growth, so John and Jeanette bought the property in 2015, they’d have the house revalued in the 2017, it’s grown by x amount of numbers. So then John’s parents are off the hook. Is that how it works? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yes and it wouldn’t need to be, you’d need to organize with the bank or with your broker directly. To say that, “Look we bought this in 2015, it’s now worth $400,000 extra.” |
| Michelle May: | Yeah. |
| Marcus Roberts: | You will most likely … If you’re john and Jeanette you’ll most likely have to pay a valuation fee to have it properly revalued. It’s not going to be any good to the bank to say, “it’s definitely gone up in the last couple of years, can you take mom and dad off?” But you’ll need to pay a valuation fee which is probably $400 to $600 max, if that valuation comes up and shows yes, you bought it at one million, it’s now worth 1.4 and you have enough now within the loan facility that you have more than that 20%. Then you can ask the bank or your broker to provide for you a deed of release to release that [inaudible] title from your loan agreements. So removing mom and dad as guarantors from your loan facility. |
| Michelle May: | Yeah, alright so that’s … Anyone listening out there, make sure you buy a nice Christmas present for you parents. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yes and you have to be … It’s not for everyone and if you are looking at doing something like that, it’s really important to let mom and dad know. For them to understand exactly what they’re going into and for them to feel comfortable with. So my biggest concern is when people come to me when they’ve just started dating and they want to put one of the two partners parents as a guarantor on a facility in joint names. Now I wouldn’t do it if they were my kids, unless they were married or unless they’d been [inaudible] from a user. Unless they certainly had enough time under their belts to certainly say, “Yeah we’re definitely together.” But it’s really important to know what your obligations are as the borrower and also as the guarantor because the bank is happy to lend you the money. But ultimately, if things get bad, they will do everything they can to make sure they recoup they’re costs. |
| Michelle May: | Of course so then when you are shopping around for a loan, are their any terms we should be looking out for when you’re comparing? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yeah, I think the biggest one that certainly gets mentioned a fair bit and you will see this on ads and if you start looking for it, you’ll see it every … Is comparison rate. Now the comparison rate was something that was brought about so that people can compare one lenders products with another, and it typically considers things like the amount of repayment, the term, interest rate, any ongoing fees and charges. As long as the loan, as well as the actual amount of the loan and they combine all of that into an applicable interest rate, and the fees and charges related to that loan as a one percentage figure. So let’s use the example of a million dollar loan, you have 4% interest rate and they new head 1% fees and charges. For the sake of looking at the comparison rate would then be 5%, so where that falls short, however, goes into how each lender has actually calculated that comparison rate. So when you go into a bank or when you speak to your broker and they talk about the comparison rate, look at what the comparison rate is calculated on. |
| Because if it is … let’s say a home loan of 115,000 dollars on a 30 year term and there is a $1,000 fees and charges every year, then the comparison rate will be that interest rate on that $150,000 plus that $1,000. If you’re borrowing a million dollars, it will be the interest rate. Same as it was for $150,000 plus $1,000 of fees and charges. Which will mean a much lower comparison rate because you’re doing it over a much larger figure. | |
| Michelle May: | Right, that sounds quite complicated still, doesn’t it? |
| Marcus Roberts: | It does and it’s sort of meant to be that … Sorry, it’s not meant to be complicated, but that is the way that it’s been done because those are the standards that we sort of agreed on many years ago. So the best way to do it, is look at for your individual circumstance, what your comparison rate would be on the amount that you are borrowing. So if you’re borrowing that $100,000 … Sorry, if you were borrowing a million dollars then that one thousand dollars in fees and charges makes up a much smaller percentage than it would if you were only borrowing $100,000 which means that your individual comparison rate will be much lower than what the bank is mandated to put on their schedule. |
| Michelle May: | Right, okay. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Is that as clear as mud? If that is not as clear as mud, then what I’ll also do is put a couple of more links in the show notes, Assek has a really good website on their money smart website, that talks about comparison rates. And we’ll put the links in the show notes and please ask any further questions if you’d like that explained further. |
| Michelle May: | But what you’re ultimately saying is very important, to make sure you’re comparing apples with apples. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Absolutely. |
| Michelle May: | Because all different lenders, like private health insurance, they all have different packages, so they’ll all come with different benefits. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Terms and conditions, features and the comparison rate is a good one to start with. But it also then goes into what features and what benefits are also being provided so is it that things that may be really important to you, may not be important to other people. So if you’re on a package for example, that includes an offset account that might be really important to you, but not important to someone else. Or a credit card that has frequent flyer points, that’s similar, you might not care about those. But they might be the thing that gets another customer really excited about it and that might be the thing that says, “Okay we’re paying $20 more every three months, but we also have the benefit of having lounge access to Quantice’s airport lounges twice a year.” |
| Michelle May: | So you just touched on offset accounts, can you run me through what that actually means? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yeah and also counted is really your way of getting even with banks to a certain extent. It’s still pretty much on the banks side, but you’re getting close to pairing with them. So an offset account is a transaction account or a savings account that’s linked to your home loan, so if you have … And for an example, lets say you have a $300,000 home loan and you have $100,000 from those lotto winnings that you made a few weeks back. If you had 300,000 dollars with the bank in a home loan and $100,000 with HSBC in a savings account. I can almost guarantee you that the loan amount at the rate you’re paying on your interest for your Aimes loan will be much higher than the amount you receive as interest of your $100,000 saves at HSBC so having an offset account allows you to bring what’s made from HSBC into the Aimes home loan and reduce the interest that you pay from $300,000 to $200,000. Even if you had that money through Aimes sent separately to your home loan, you will not receive the same amount of benefit largely that you would if you had had it sitting in the offset account. |
| So it’s a way of reducing the cost that you pay each month by reducing the cost of interest on your home loan on a day to day basis and it’s usually calculated daily and then charged applicably at the end of each month or the end of each mortgage cycle. | |
| Michelle May: | Right so every time you get paid, your balance goes up, you have a bit more of an offset, you pay a bit less interest … |
| Marcus Roberts: | Every time you pay the credit card, it goes down a bit, but something really … If it’s the right thing for you and speak to your bank, speak to your broker about it. But an offsets really nice to have for a lot of people because you’re going to have your salary credited directly into your offset account, you can have any dividends, any rental, anything. All of your money that you possibly have coming in goes into the offset account that will thereby reduce the amount of interest that you’re paying back. On an owner occupier where there is no tax benefit for having that debt, reducing that interest cost as quickly as possible is always a good thing. |
| Michelle May: | Yeah, yeah of course. So another term that I’ve heard flying around is a redraw facility, what does that actually mean? |
| Marcus Roberts: | So a redraw facility and an offset often get linked together in peoples minds, but they work in a slightly different ways. In the example we had, so you’ve got Aimes that have loaned them $300,000, you’ve got a $100,000 sitting in the offset. That means that you’re only paying interest on that $200,000. If instead of an offset, you had a redraw facility, what you could do is when you won the lotto winnings of $100,000 you say, “Great we’re going to knock out some of the mortgage.” Your home loan is now $200,000, but then 6 months go by and you say, “Well we really wanna do a kitchen, we want to renovate the kitchen, we want to renovate the backyard.” That’s going to be $30,000, that’s $50,000. You can redraw that $30,000 by applying to the bank under your redraw facility to take it back up to $230,000 or $250,000. |
| Michelle May: | Right so you’re taking out that bigger equity that you’ve put in? |
| Marcus Roberts: | That you’ve already put in, right. Yeah. Where the down side of that lies is it’s up to the bank to release that to you, whereas with an offset, you don’t have to seek approval. As long as you’re under your overall limit, you can simply take the lotto winnings, you can take that [inaudible] and use without any purpose declaration, without any reasoning or rationality from the bank. You can use it because it’s your money. |
| Michelle May: | Yeah, yeah slightly different there. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Whereas a redraw could take 48 hours, could take 72 hours and the bank is not mandated to provide it to you. It’s a facility and also usually comes with costs, so every time you make a redraw request it might be $25 here or there. The last big point between the two, which we’ll cover in a different … Maybe we’ll cover in a different topic, is the way that the Australian tax office views offset facilities vs redraw facilities. If, for example, you’re ever using that property as the investment property. So look into how that construction will certainly talk about that another day, but typically an offset facility is a much more beneficial thing to have as a feature of your home loan. |
| Michelle May: | Right okay well we’ll definitely converse on more of that next time. Is there anything else we should be looking at when choosing the right loan? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Look into any fees and charges. Package fees, how fees and how charges are calculated. If you’re on a fixed rate facility, which you spoke about close to the beginning of the show, what happens when that fixed rate runs out, so if you’re on a 3 year fixed rate facility in three years time, what happens? |
| Michelle May: | Yeah very good question. |
| Marcus Roberts: | You know, where does your home loan thing go in terms of variable, do you go back up to the standard variable rate? Which is usually 1 to … 1% higher than what you can negotiate through your bank or broker and what fees and charges are applicable on the account. So if your bank says, “Well the first use package fee is waived.” And then next year, it’s $595 is that still the right loan for you? |
| Michelle May: | Yeah so you just talked about negotiating in your rate. How often should you shop around for a better rate? Then say your on a variable, you’re no longer tied to anybody. How often do you recommend people cover the ground? |
| Marcus Roberts: | I mean I think there’s certainly some vested interest in some of the advertising that you see, so you’ll see ads all over the place, that talk about refinancing. Now, that’s not even reviewing right, that’s just a straight refund. I really think it’s in customers interest and the general public’s interest to look at it like a contract, so look at it on a yearly basis and review. So is it still in line with what you would get if you were a new customer today because what a lot of banks do, whether they explicitly admit it or not, is a new customer to them is a much more attractive proposition than an existing customer. And it’s a shame because they actually make more money from their existing customers than their new customers, but you can negotiate a much bigger deal as a new prospect via bank than you can if you’re an existing customer. So what we do at Brighter Finances, we do annual reviews for our client, so when it comes up to your settlement anniversary at the end of each twelve months. |
| We’ll actually call the bank, make sure that you’re still on line with what you should be, and so you have no had this customer for three years. Is there anything better that you could do for them in reducing either fees or charges? Package fees, the interest rate, especially if you’re on a variable rate because they should know that they’re on a good wicked if they have an existing customer. If not, then we simply speak to clients and say … speak to our clients and say, “Look I’ve gone to [inaudible] whoever it is, they have been willing or they have not been willing. This is what it will cost if you stay here, this is what it would cost in terms of switching. In terms of time, in terms of investment to move to another lender. But if you don’t review your loan, especially if you’ve had it directly through a bank. So if you’ve gone directly into a bank branch in suburbia somewhere, I doubt they’ve ever done an annual review, I doubt you’ve ever been called twelve months after the loan settled or even five years after the loan settled to make sure that it still works for you. | |
| It is certainly in your interest to look at what you’re paying vs what you should be paying every year to every three years. | |
| Michelle May: | Yeah, I think it’s definitely worse, it’s something I do every two years. I think I should step it up and do it every year. But it’s worth talking to an experienced broker on this I think, rather than just going down to your local high street and getting an expert to give you some advice around this subject because they can really make sure that they save you a lot of money. Then just make the loan work for you as opposed to the other way around. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Absolutely and I think that … I know that brokers in the most recent results now [inaudible] something like 62 or 63% of the loans that were done in Australia for this last year. But what we’re finding more and more is that I have a number of clients that have come to me, where they’ve gone to a branch … I won’t name names, but gone to a bank branch and been told that the bank is offering this. They come to me and I can negotiate a better rate with that same bank because all of a sudden that bank knows that they’re competing against 30 other lenders. |
| If you walk into … As I said at the beginning, if you walk into used car dealerships, if you walk into a ford dealership. You’re walking out with a Ford, they’re not going to tell you about Audi’s or Mercedes or anything else, they have one product to sell and that is the only thing that they have. If you go to a broker … A good broker should be working across 25 to 30 different lenders, and within those lenders there will be a number of different products that may suit the individuals about finding the right bank. It’s almost like profit match or it’s almost like a dating show. You’re finding the right loan for the right customer and every customer is going to be different. | |
| Michelle May: | Yeah, yeah so make sure you find that right broker out there I’d say. Do your research, I mean talk to banks for sure. Talk to banks and say, “Listen, I’ve been offered this rate with this particular bank, can you better it.” Because you know it’s all about just making sure it works for you. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Right and really look at is that the best that they can offer? And I’m not suggesting for a second you should be going to 30 banks yourself and say, “Ones offering me .01 less.” And then going back and forth across the street, but at least finding out what they’re best offer is is certainly in your interest. |
| Michelle May: | Absolutely, well thank you so much for explaining that. I’ve certainly learned a thing or two. Have you got anything else that we should be thinking about or is this maybe covering something next time? |
| Marcus Roberts: | Yeah I think in the interest of time, we can certainly talk about some other factors to think about in future episodes, but that’s probably a really good intro and we’ll provide some further lengths in the show notes for this episode. So might be a good time to wrap up for this week. Really as we’ve said before, this is your show, this is about you. We’d like to hear from you, we’d like to get an understanding of what you’re looking for. So please send us an email at Ask@SydneyPropertyInsider.com.au. That’s A-S-K at Sydneypropertyinsider.com.au. And ask any question that relates to property or Sydney property or just in general around. Anything that’s going to help your understanding of the property market. |
| Michelle May: | Absolutely well I look forward to talking with you again, Marcus, next week. And I hope you enjoyed listening, see you next week. |
| Marcus Roberts: | Thanks everyone, we’ll see you next week. |