Empower Blog Home Loan

7 Things to Consider when Securing Your New Home/Investment Property Loan

Whether it’s your first time or tenth home or investment purchase, choosing a lender in a competitive market and getting a loan approved by a bank or lender is a laborious task. There are a lot of requirements to satisfy, applications to fill out and paperwork to get it order, so it can seem as if you will never get it all together and you are...

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Mortgage Free at 23

Jack Stevens knows just how short life is. He was only a teenager when his father sadly passed away from cancer at the young and unfair age of just 58. It was a tough time in his life and all the more painful by the fact his father had been working hard to build a large property portfolio - one that would have provided him with a comfortable retire...

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What do the Banks look for when Lending Money?

So you are thinking about actually getting a loan? What is it that the Banks are going to be looking for in terms of being able to lend you money for a mortgage? There's actually 5Cs that allow them to do that. Character, Capacity, Conditions, Collateral and Common Sense. So let's explore all five! The first one is Character. When they are talki...

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7 Ways to Get your Kids on the Property Ladder Sooner

With the question on affordability always on the mind of those looking to get on the property ladder, Ben Kingsley will share with you seven potential ways to help accelerate your kids dream of property ownership. This presentation at the Melbourne Home Buyer and Property Investor Show will look at ways in which family members can help the Gen X...

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Understanding Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI)

Post the Second World War, Australia transformed itself into ‘The Lucky Country’. We opened our doors to large levels of immigration and we had plenty of land, food, water and great weather that made us attractive for many who were fleeing war torn areas of Europe and alike. It was also through this era that we got our second great tag line of ...

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What are the Costs associated with Buying a Property?

We're about to buy a property! It's an exciting time but we also need to understand the numbers behind acquiring that property. So what are there? Let's use a basically a back-of-the-envelope calculation to help us understand what it's going to cost to buy that property and what sort of loan that we might have to take on that. So let's get our pe...

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How much Money can you borrow?

So how much money can I borrow? It's a question we all ask ourselves from time to time and it's a good question to ask and from a Lender's point of view it's a question around serviceability. So when they're talking about serviceability they're actually saying that here's the household income coming in, here's the expenditure that we've got associa...

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How can Parents help?

I had a fabulous Christmas party with my Mum's side of the family Christmas just gone. Three exciting things happened. Firstly - I'd pulled together a wonderful negotiation on a large floorplan 2BR apartment in St Kilda for a lovely client who was traveling in Vietnam with her friend. Her Dad had agreed to be her Power of Attorney in the event that...

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What Contractors and Self Employed Borrowers Need to Know

Borrowing money as a contractor for self employed person is not as straight forward as borrowing money when you are a PAYG employee.  In fact the levels of lending policy extremes when comparing PAYG and self employed or contractors is great. At one extreme end, PAYG employees can seek to secure a Home loan with some lenders as early as getting...

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Investment Loan Structure

Most Property Investors realise that debt plays a part in operating most investment properties.  Furthermore, those sophisticated investors who learn that ‘sensible’ leverage or borrowings can accelerate their potential investment returns, take an active approach in better understanding finance and finance structuring through working with prof...

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Should you be looking at your Home Loan in Isolation?

Do you want someone to help you pick a home loan (Mortgage Broker) or do you want to seek financial advice when it comes to "crucial financial arrangements" by having the guidance of a Finance Advisor? So you have decided to either buy your first home, your next property or to refinance because you want a better deal or you have plans to do some...

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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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