It’s easy for us to feel like when we move countries and our life resets, that our debts back home are just no longer an issue. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how it works. Your debt obligations travel with you. Think of relocation as just changing the stage rather than the script. Your lenders still want repayment. So, what happens? The Short Answer Leaving Australia doesn’t erase what you owe. There’s a good chance that the creditor may keep contacting you

You want a place to call your own, and fortunately, the path to get there is directly through habits you control. This guide shows you how to save for a mortgage without turning life into a grind. Start With the Destination Before we get any further, we’d suggest working out your target home deposit and timeline before you even start saving. So this means picking a price bracket that suits your income, then translating that into a house deposit figure. 

Buying your first place feels big, but the path gets clearer once you run the numbers. Most banks want a home loan deposit between 5 and 20%. And the purchase price sets the target.  If you’re looking at a $700,000 property, a 10% deposit comes to $70,000, plus everything from stamp duty to legal fees and other upfront costs that hit before settlement. After you move in, ongoing costs like rates and insurance keep ticking, so plan for those too.

From working out residency status to juggling loan terms, it helps to know what comes next when you’re searching for a mortgage. If you’re a new immigrant mortgage seeker, this guide explains each step of the journey.  By the time you finish, you’ll have a clear path toward a home purchase – even if you’re still sorting visa type details. Know Your Residency Status First, check your visa status. Visa holders face different lending criteria than permanent resident applicants –

When you start shopping for a home loan, you’ll bump into the term “maximum loan-to-value” a few times. It shows up on lender fact sheets and in conversations with brokers, but what does it actually mean? It’s basically the highest loan amount a lender will offer relative to a property’s purchase price or market value. So it helps you plan your deposit and know all your upfront costs if you understand that number from the start. Common Misconceptions and Myths

When you first dive into real estate investment, you’ll hear about the capitalization rate again and again. It’s a simple concept on the surface, but it’s one of those things that encompasses a bunch of different factors, like: So you’re not exactly alone if you’ve ever asked yourself “what is a good capital rate for investment property.” Let’s break it down now: Grasping the Capitalization Rate At its core, the capitalization rate – or cap rate – is just the

Are you looking to buy your first home in Australia? We appreciate that while this is obviously a very exciting journey, you’ll undoubtedly have your fair share of questions. Will you qualify? What grants exist? How do you navigate the jargon?  We get it. It’s a lot. But hopefully you’ll have a much clearer understanding of what you need to do by the end of this article. Understanding Your Starting Point The first thing that you’re probably asking yourself is

If you’re an Australian thinking about buying property overseas, you might be surprised to learn that some of the cheapest mortgage rates in Europe are lower than what you’d find back home.  European Mortgage Rates at a Glance There’s no single “European” mortgage rate because it differs by country. The average mortgage interest rate across the euro area is roughly 3.30%. But individual countries deviate a lot from that average.  To put these numbers in perspective, let’s compare them to

Are you struggling to decide whether you want to go to a big bank or a small lender to get your mortgage? We’d totally get why you’d think about just going to a big bank. There’s familiarity and some level of reliability that you might not be sure you’re getting with a small lender.  That said, this process is more about finding someone who’s going to match your priorities – that could be: Fortunately, both the traditional giants and fairly

Ever heard the term “tracker mortgage” and wondered what it means? If you’re an Australian homebuyer or homeowner, you might not be too familiar with this concept, since local lenders do not commonly offset it.  So in simple terms – what is a tracker mortgage? It’s a home loan with a variable interest rate that moves in line with a specific benchmark (which is usually an official cash rate that the central bank sets).  But the main difference here is

In simple terms, a lifetime mortgage is a loan that lets you release equity – that is, access some of the value of your home as cash – while you continue living in it. It’s essentially a type of equity release product that’s quite popular in the UK, and in Australia it’s very similar to what’s known as a reverse mortgage.  You usually need to be around retirement age (typically 60 or older) and own your home outright (or have

Between making an offer and getting the keys, there are plenty of extra costs along the way outside of just handing over the price on the tag. There’s a lot more involved than just the agreed purchase price.  From the obvious outlays to the subtle add-ons, every little piece can add up until the total feels much bigger than you initially expected. If you’re preparing to purchase property, you’ll definitely benefit from thinking beyond what that initial price tag you

We get how getting on the property ladder feels at first. It’s obviously exciting, but the sheer number of steps and unfamiliar terms is complicated and you’re not going to find it easy. Looking at property listings and dreaming about locations is the fun part, but it won’t be long until you hit a wall of financial jargon.  One of the first and most important terms you’ll encounter is the ‘mortgage in principle’. So, what is a mortgage in principle?

So, can you get a mortgage with bad credit? Obviously, it’s everybody’s goal at some point to own a home, but we get that not everyone’s been blessed with a smooth financial life and may have made some poor financial decisions over the years that have resulted in bad credit. Fortunately, the reality is that you can, but it usually takes a bit more effort and creativity since it’s definitely not going to be as easy.  In Australia, lenders will

Regardless of the reason, we can all appreciate that interest rates have been surging throughout Australia for a bit too long now, but are mortgage rates going down at last?  Some of the early signs we’ve had in 2025 this far would indicate that they genuinely are. For instance, on the 20th of May 2025, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut the cash rate by 25 basis points to 3.85%, which was actually its first reduction in years.  The

We get that buying an investment property can be exciting – it’s a whole different process to buying somewhere to live and your mindset is completely different – but it still raises a few practical questions.  In Australia, lenders generally expect a larger deposit on an investment home loan than on an owner-occupied loan. Typically, you’ll need around 20% of the purchase price as a deposit (an 80% loan-to-value ratio) if you want to avoid paying lenders mortgage insurance (LMI),