Home Loan Hints

Thank you for your question.

We can only provide a generic answer to your question as each home loan provider has different discharge fees and deferred administration costs. You would be best advised to contact your current lender to seek the answers.

In relation to intouch Home Loans we can confirm that as of 1 July 2011 there will be no exit fees or deferred administration fees on any of our loans.

The government recently passed legislation to remove exit fees and as a non bank lender intouch Home Loans will have no such fees for all new loans after 1 July 2011.

If you are unsure of any aspect of your loan please do not hesitate to let us know the specifics and we can try to assist. Best of luck

Thank you for your question.

Firstly, well done on saving such a large deposit.

In regards to obtaining a home loan it will really depend on what is listed on your credit report. If you still have defaults, court judgements, etc listed then it will be difficult to obtain a standard home loan and may have to consider options such as non confirming lenders.

If you do have defaults, judgements, etc on your credit report you can find out when these will be lifted by contacting Veda Advantage direct on 1300 762 207 or visit http://www.vedaadvantage.com/ .

If the listings have sometime to go then you can also consider services of Credit Repair company which can assess your file and see if they can have any of the listings removed. These companies do charge a fee for this service.

If you credit report is clean then you should be in a good position to obtain a home loan. Make sure you contact of professional home loan manager to help you through the process.

Good luck in purchasing your home.

Thank you for your question as it is a very interesting one.

You are asking a great question because it is really important to know what interest rate you are paying. There are so many options available with home loan providers and their interest rates that can help you save money and pay off your home loan more quickly.

The average rate for the four major banks is around 7.79% but as stated there are so many options available and our advice would be that you shouldn’t be paying anything higher than around 7.40% or even lower if you shop around.

At 7.4% on a loan of $280,000 interest only loan the monthly repayment would be $1,726.67pm.

Best of luck with your new purchase.

Thank you for your question.

When borrowing money to buy property, the home loan provider will require all title holders to be on the mortgage and the loan, regardless of the percentage of property owned.

Everything you have mentioned is possible however it will come down to the specific lending criteria of a home loan provider as to whether the loan can be structured to meet your requirements.

It would be great to discuss your situation in more detail with you to give you more tailored advice so if you would like to click on the "talk to a home loan expert" button we can put someone in touch with you to see what can be done to help you.

Otherwise, best of luck with your home loan goals.

Thank you for your question.

There are a couple of ways to look at this situation.

Firstly, if you are borrowing 80% or less of the value of your property a personal loan can certainly be used as a deposit or funds to complete the transaction.

The only caveat to this situation is that when the provider performs a serviceability calculation they will factor in the repayments of the personal loan to ensure you can afford to repay both debts.

If you are borrowing above 80% of the value of your home you will need to demonstrate that you have a 5% deposit genuinely saved.

A personal loan unfortunately does not count as genuine savings. If you placed the borrowed funds in a savings account in your name for 6 months then it may be considered genuine savings as you have shown the discipline of keeping the funds in an account for 6 months.

After 6 months the funder considers this genuine savings as you have shown you are able to maintain saved funds separate to your normal living expenses.

Best of luck

Thank you for your question.

Based on the general information you have supplied it appears likely that you may well have to pay capital gains tax.

However, without knowing the specifics of these transactions and your other financial obligations it is not possible to give you a definitive answer on this. The question you have asked is better asked of your accountant or financial advisor as any advice we give would be general only.

If you do not have a specialist that can help you in this area we would be happy to put you in touch with someone who could give you specific and professional advice.

Best wishes

Thank you for your question.

When you enter in to a home loan contract the term of the repayments is set at the beginning of the loan. Generally this will be either 25 or 30 years.

Your monthly repayments are calculated on how much your loan amount, your interest rate as well as the term.

If your interest rate is variable, then repayments will increase and decrease depending on what the rate is. The other scenario to take into account is interest only repayments as opposed to principal and interest repayments.

Interest only repayments are determined by how much money you owe on the loan and will increase and decrease accordingly. Principal & Interest repayments do not change outside of interest rate changes, as your loan balance reduces.

Finally, if you are behind in your loan repayments and are due to make more than one payment the provider will expect you to make more than your minimum payment to get your account in order.

Otherwise, no a home a loan provider cannot just increase your payments above the minimum required.

We hope this helps

Thank you for your question.

There is nothing stopping you buying a property that is currently owned by tenants in common as any potential issues would lie with the current owners of the property.

For the property to be sold to you all of the tenants in common on the title of the property have to agree to sell you the property.

There are three main ways to dissolve the tenancy in common.

1. One or more co-tenants can always buy out the others.

2. The property can be sold and the proceeds distributed equitably among the owners.

3. A partition action can be filed. This involves going to court and asking to sell the property under court order and distribute the proceeds among the owners.

In most cases this will not be an issue as the property will be on the market advertised for sale so the process would be invisible to you and you would receive clear title at settlement.

We hope this helps.

This is an excellent question and is evident of the important and value of dealing with an experienced home loan manager.

Whilst the calculation may technically be correct, there are a number of reasons that the scenario put forward may not be so practical.

Firstly, the number of home loan providers offering 100% home loans is almost non existent and any qualification criteria would be extremely strict and the interest rate may not be as competitive.

Secondly, if you borrow more than 80% of the value of the property (in this case $280,000), you will be required to pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance.

The mortgage insurance premium could be as low as $1,100 (if you borrow 81%) or as high as $15,000 (if you are able to borrow around 97%%).

If you have sufficient funds to cover a 20% deposit, our recommendation would be to use the 20% as the cost of Mortgage Insurance would outweigh any potential savings via the lower deposit / higher offset balance.

Best of luck

Thank you for your question.

If you took out a loan to build a home on your parents property and you had to use the same property to secure the loan, your parents would also need to be borrowers on the loan.

A home loan provider cannot provide a mortgage using someone’s property without their consent, meaning they have to be on the loan as well. This would mean that your parents would also be liable to repay the mortgage.

If you own another property separate to your parents, you could take out a mortgage over this property and use the funds from this loan to build a home on your parent’s property.

That way the home loan provider is secured by a property only owned by you and your parents do not have to be involved at all. However, this would also depend on whether your parents are already repaying a mortgage over their property as they would need their providers consent to allow changes to the property.

As you can see there are a number of different things to consider in this scenario but the key points are that a home loan provider has to protect the rights of property title holders and also ensure they are getting the true and correct security.

Best of luck