Empower Blog Borrowing Power

Lenders doing what they do – Lending Money

With all the global economic uncertainty and the flow on effect to the cost of funds for lenders and the risk of possibly a softening Australian economy, one might be thinking the banks will be considering tightening up lending policy. Our read of home loan lending policy is a little bit more macro, driven by the banks’ need to continue to str...

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The Cost of Interest

What is the largest single amount of money you expect to part with in your life?  For most families, a family home will probably be the largest single purchase they will make in their lives.  But while the actual purchase price you pay for a house may be the biggest amount of money you spend in a single lump sum, there is likely to be another cos...

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Higher LVR’s Back in Play = Good News for First Home Buyers

Over the past few weeks we have seen several lenders adjust their Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) to allow for more First Home Buyers and Investors take on higher levels of lending against the security of the property they are purchasing.  There are some lenders who are in the 100% lending space, meaning that the borrower only needs to find approx. 5% t...

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How Do Lenders Assess Loans?

Gone are the days when you can just go down to your local bank branch and get loan approval because of your longstanding relationship with the manager. These days lenders have become quite sophisticated in their method of assessing loans - it’s now all about Risk Assessment. For years, lenders have been compiling data about every one of their ...

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Rents On the Up

The recent interest rate rises are doing what the RBA had hoped in terms of slowing down the demand in the property market in a general sense. By increasing the cash rate the flow on effect is felt across all facets of the residential market. The first impact is the reduction in borrowing power, as the banks move their lending assessment rates ...

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Lazy Borrowings – Are they costing you?

Recently we saw CUA (the largest Credit Union in Australia) reduce their standard variable rate by 0.25% to 6.62%.  It was a marketing boon for them, as major media picked up on the story as part of what we will see as continued big bank bashing, given their recent profit results and also the overall market share they hold currently. The intere...

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Mistakes Borrowers Make

With finance the flavour of this month’s newsletter I thought I’d pen a list of borrower’s mistakes. This list is not specific to investors or owner occupiers; they are basic mistakes or assumptions that lead to mistakes that all borrowers can make..... So lets take a look at them (in no particular order) Going straight to their current B...

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