When you go to your bank to discuss your home loan, they’ll usually discuss your plan, take a look at your financial history and tell you whether or not they’ll give you the money you need to buy a home.

Going to see a good mortgage broker is a bit different. We often don’t already have your business – we want to win it. So we tend to go above and beyond with service delivery. We want you to walk away with a great feeling. A feeling of trust, security and hope – hope that we’ll help you achieve your dreams. Sometimes you’ll also walk away with an action plan of things you need to do before you apply for your loan to improve your chances of success.

The bank is there to sell a product, return a dividend to their shareholders and hopefully a bonus to the salesperson (aka lending specialist). Lending you money is a way to achieve those goals.

A mortgage broker is there to build a business to support ourselves and our families. We want to secure referrals based on the service we’ve provided, we want your return business, we want you to buy a home using the loan that we’ve secured for you – the loan that best matches what you need. We’re paid the same regardless of the loan you take, so we have no bias over the products we offer – we just match them to you.

There are things that a mortgage broker will tell you that a bank won’t because it’s just not on their radar. Here are a few things that I’ve discussed with clients this week that they would never have been told by a bank:

  1. If you’re making voluntary super contributions and saving to buy your first home, you can make those contributions into the First Home Super Saver Scheme (FHSSS) where there are great tax benefits and it helps you save a whole lot faster. Find out more about FHSSS here.
  2. We’ll go through your living expenses like an assessor will – before it’s time for assessment. This will allow you to make modifications to your spending BEFORE it makes an impact on your eligibility for a loan.
  3. We’ll compare a range of home loans from different lenders – their rate, features, costs, fees and things like the difference in the Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI ) premiums.
  4. We’ll make sure you’re aware of all the additional costs when it comes to buying a home – like stamp duty, conveyancing fees, removalists – and all that stuff.
  5. We can step you through a standard contract of sale and give you some tips on researching and negotiating on the price.
  6. We’ll give you a game plan if you’re not quite ready to buy your house yet and keep you accountable and on track to meet your goals.
  7. We’ll keep in touch throughout the life of your loan to make sure the loan is still meeting your needs and that the rate is competitive. We’ll even talk to you about leveraging equity to either renovate or invest in another property.

A good mortgage broker can offer you so much more than the average lending specialist in your bank – and it doesn’t cost you a cent more.

Using a broker makes good sense. Buying a home and securing a loan requires good sense.