Your road to home ownership

Step 1 – Initial discussions and helping you set a property budget

The process starts with an initial conversation when we discuss your financial goals, needs and concerns. If you haven’t already done so, we’ll help you establish your borrowing capacity taking into account your deposit and monthly repayment capability.

You can be confident that we’ll ensure you’re purchasing within your means. A fact find document is completed to gather all this information and once we have the details required, we can start our search for the best options available to you.

Step 2 – Our qualified personalised recommendation (1 to 2 days)

After thoroughly researching the market in light of your circumstances and goals, we give you our recommendations. We let you know the best option from our range of lenders and also negotiate with your current lender (if applicable) to see if they can beat or match another offer. (As a busy professional, you may not want to move banks. However, you must ensure you’re still getting a market competitive deal.)

We present one formal recommendation in the form of a mortgage report, which we call a ‘credit proposal’. It details the funds you need to complete the purchase, the repayments, interest rate, ongoing fees and upfront fees involved. It shows you the sensitivity of increase to interest rates and corresponding increase in repayments, so you are fully aware of the cost implications of different scenarios.

Step 3 – We organise your home loan application (1 to 2 days)

Once you’ve confirmed you wish to proceed with our recommendation, and when we’ve received all the necessary information, documents and a privacy form, we prepare your home loan application and submit it to the lender.

NOTE ON PRE-APPROVAL: We make sure your finance is all arranged before you go looking for your new home – so you can make offers on the property you like with confidence and conviction.

Step 4 – Arranging your pre-approval (conditional approval) (1 to 2 days)

The lender assesses your application, performs a credit check and verification of your financial situation before providing conditional approval. We call to let you know you’ve got pre-approval and advise on any conditions yet to be satisfied. (You may need to provide further information such as additional income documents or bank statements.)

The lender organises a valuer to inspect your property, who then writes and submits a valuation report to the bank. The valuation will confirm the bank’s assessment of the value of your property. We let you know that your property valuation is received.

The valuation can take time depending on how quickly the valuer is provided access to your property. If your application is urgent, we can preorder the valuation before we even submit the loan application. This is also useful when refinancing your property so we know what value we can lend to – there is no point applying to a lender if they don’t provide the property value we need to support the loan you want.

The valuer will contact the person providing access within 24 hours of receiving the valuation request. Once they have been able to access the property the report is returned within 24-48 hours.

Step 5 – Unconditional (formal) approval (1 to 2 days)

If mortgage insurance is not required, the lender issues unconditional home loan approval and contracts. If mortgage insurance is required, we seek a formal ‘sign-off’ from your mortgage insurer. This is formal acknowledgment that your home loan application has been approved. You’ll receive notification confirming unconditional approval by phone and letter.

Step 6 – Loan and Mortgage Documents (1 to 3 days)

The lender issues your loan and mortgage documents to be signed and returned. We’ll organise a time for you to come to our offices where we will help you complete them.

Step 7 – Loan Settlement (1 to 5 days)

Once the bank review and certifies your loan documents and says they are ready to settle, we’ll let you know so that you can proceed to settlement.

Step 8 – Congratulations!

Congratulations! You’ll receive a call from your solicitor / conveyancer confirming that settlement has been completed. We’ll ring to congratulate you on your success!

Post Settlement

Our service to you doesn’t end on settlement. We’ll stay in touch to make sure your loan continues to meet your needs and we’re available at any time to assist with ongoing support.

Note: Timeframes may vary depending on the bank and time of year.