Empower Blog Home Loan

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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Double Christmas Bonus for Mortgage Holders or First Timers

For those of you reading this newsletter with Mortgages I put a challenge out to you, which could give you a double Christmas bonus on top of the RBA announcement to drop rates – the question to you is, do you want a further financial bonus – If Yes read on.... Over the next week or two you are going to receive a letter from your lender anno...

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Exit Fee Passed as Legislation

The legislation to ban Exit Fees has been passed into law on 23rd March, by the Federal Government. These new laws will see Exit Fees, including Deferred Establishment Fees banned from 1 July.  The new regulations are: Regulation 79A The new Regulation 79A provides that a credit fee or charge is prohibited if:  it is provided for in a credit...

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$350 Surplus Cash per week could equate to Millions

This month we focus on how you can use surplus cash of $350 per week to potentially control an investment property worth $450,000. It’s all in the numbers….let’s take a look. Surplus Household cash $350 per week after expenses, commitments etc. Purchase Price $450,000 Estimated Purchase Costs $22,500 (5%) includes stamp duty, set up c...

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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 let's take a look at them (in no particular order): 1) Going straight to their c...

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Cash Flow You Didn’t Know You Had…..

The management of cash flow and the provisioning for future cash flow is critical in helping to build a long term wealth base. There is no benefit in buying real estate and not being able to hold onto it for a traditional full value cycle, because the entry, holding and exit fees are usually high, so you are reliant on the value to compound signifi...

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Bank Loyalty, Does it pay off?

Over my journey in this profession, I have meet many great people and continue to work for most of them in helping them achieve their goals whether it be securing their first home, refinancing or planning out their pathway of financial independence through investment in Residential property.  As I do with every client I ask them the same question ...

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What’s the Cheapest Loan?

If I had a dollar for every time……. so the saying goes, and in my case it relates to people asking me what is the best interest rate at the moment or who’s got the cheapest loan? I wish there was a simple answer to this question, and believe you me, when I first started out in the finance industry I was also naive to think that surely this...

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