brought to you by Loan Market
We’ve
been in our mid-century
home for about three months now. How time flies when you’re having fun! However,
the process of buying a house and moving is not something you can call fun...
It’s
a pretty stressful time and it’s not something we’d want to be doing again in a
big hurry. From the get-go, we were worried about the house contract and
whether our offer would be accepted, building and pest inspections and of
course obtaining the much-needed finance to buy the house of our dreams.
 |
| exterior shot of our mid-century home at night... |
All
I can say is thank goodness for mortgage brokers. We have always used a
mortgage broker to help us find a competitive loan to buy our houses.
Loan Market is just one of the many
mortgage brokers out there in the marketplace. With a mortgage broker, the running
around is done for you, if you know what I mean…and it’s a free service. Funnily,
it is one of the few free things available to you when you buy a house. Ironic,
really, as it will give you the biggest debt of your life. Ha!
Our
very first home loan was with a non-bank lender which was suggested by our
mortgage broker - mostly because it was the late 1990s and we were too much of
a risk to traditional banks given our very meagre incomes. The mortgage broker handled all the paper
work and outlined the best loan options available to suit our particular
situation.
Never
in a million years would we have even thought to go down that non-bank lender
route The loan also fulfilled our
criteria of having no monthly account keeping fee, allowing extra repayments,
good interest rate (at the time!) and have it split into fixed and variable portions. It was a very good loan and suited us perfectly.
Most
importantly, we were able to purchase our first house and get our big toe in
the door of the property market.
When
we bought our mid-century house in March this year, we used our mortgage broker
again to refinance our loan. It really
was one less stress on our time, knowing our finances were in good hands.
I
think it is worth giving a mortgage broker a call if you are in the market to
buy a property or even if you are thinking of refinancing. Most brokers will visit
you at home and you can organise after-hours appointments which is great if you
work full-time or have small children.
Anyway,
I’m very glad to have that process of buying a house behind us. Nesting and
renovating is way more fun.
We've also used mortgage brokers for our last three property loans, mainly for the added value in terms of service that you get, and I definitely recommend word of mouth for a referral as a satisfied customer speaks volumes more than any advertising. Also, don't be afraid to get a comparative quote for your existing home or property loan, and then get your broker (or you) to ask your existing financier to match it. You'll be surprised at what leverage you have when you have the option of walking out the door and taking that multi-decade revenue chain with you.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, renovating is way more 'fun' than moving ;-)
Cheers, Col
Hey Col, Thanks for your comment. You guys sound like us. We like to get the best possible deal for our home loan. We'd much rather save the dollars and put it back into the house. xx
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