Questions people ask

With the three questions on the finder. It takes about fifteen seconds and returns one of seven lanes, the questions that decide your outcome inside it, and the evidence to have ready.

A group of Australian lending that shares an assessment. First home, refinance, investment, self-employed, commercial, car and personal, and bridging each involve different evidence, different rules and in two cases different regulators. Working out which one you are in is most of the battle.

That is common — a self-employed first home buyer is genuinely in both. Read both, and expect the stricter evidence standard to govern the file. That is why income situation is a separate axis on this site rather than a label.

It is a fixed decision table, written by hand and published in the page source, evaluated in your browser. The same answers always give the same result, and you can read the mapping to see why it landed where it did.

Australian government agencies. ASIC through Moneysmart for consumer credit guidance, the ATO for tax and super, Housing Australia for the guarantee schemes, APRA for serviceability expectations, the RBA for the cash rate, and each state or territory revenue office for duties and land tax. Every lane links to the relevant one.

Structural facts move slowly, and every page carries the date it was last reviewed. For faster-moving numbers such as rates and promotions, the pages name who publishes the figure and how often it changes, so you always read the live value at its source.

The team behind Arrivau, an Australian finance business. It is stated on the About page and in the footer, because knowing who wrote something is part of how you weigh it.

Four, in order: loan-to-value ratio, the repayment at a rate a few points above the actual one, total cost over the term, and — if you are switching — the break-even month. The "what to calculate" page has the formula and what changes each answer.

In a calculator someone maintains against current rules. Moneysmart publishes free ones, and every lender publishes their own. Run both: the lender's version uses the lender's assumptions, which is what an application will actually use.

Divide the switching cost by the monthly saving to get a break-even month count, then compare that against the clawback period in the terms and the ongoing rate once the promotion ends. The promotions page walks through all seven checks.

A chat assistant that answers general questions about how Australian lending works, in plain English. Anything specific to your own file belongs with a licensed provider who can see your full position.

Send it to contact@loanhub.au. Corrections get made and the page review date is updated.