Hi all,
we've been living in Perth for one year now and are enjoying it.
We've started to look for a house and mortgages, even in these times with hillarious house prices here. :curse: Anyway.

How are your experiences with mortgages and lenders? There are so many options and lenders around... Some internet-only lenders have trustworthy names like 'Ratebusters'...

What have been your experiences?

Cheers,
Thomas

Hi, been here 10 years and had no problems at all with Commonwealth Bank, but if we needed a mortgage now, we would definitely try someone like Aussie Home Loans who would do the 'shopping around' for us.

My wife and I have just bought a house through Bernie Lewis Home Loans, even though we're still living in the UK. The mortgage is provided by Commonwealth Bank.

I'm an Australian, so I didn't need special permission to buy property in Australia - and BLHL took my wife's income into account when calculating the amount we could borrow, which other brokers refused to do.

Did everything via email (with the help of my mother, who lives Down Under); just had to print stuff out, fill it in, scan it, and email it back again.

I found them to be very helpful and efficient. The only catch is that they're based in Adelaide, so I don't know if they with properties in other states. Still, it's worth asking.

We are having a nightmare trying to get a Mortgage. We contacted a Mortgage broker, who was absolutely useless!!. He has applied for two mortgages for us, both were turned down because we didn't even meet the basic criteria. This has taken us 6 weeks to find out.

The first was with the Rock Bank in Queensland, who require you to have been in the same job for 12 months and the second with ING, who require 6 months. Now I would have expected this guy to know these things, but he didn't. So if you are looking at a broker, make sure they know what they are doing!.

We have now applied through another broker, Acquired, and he suggested for us to apply to ANZ, Adelaide Bank or Commonwealth as these all welcome new migrants. We have just 9 days left to sort out the finance.

Hi,

Just to let you know we have been hear 7 weeks ans we got a mortgage with the Commonwealth Bank last week. no problems. I had only been working a week and the hubby 2 weeks. We had over a 20% deposit so that did help.

Sunshine23

Thanks for that.

I do think that's the main problem. We need 95% so have to get insurance, it seems that's where we are falling down, the bank are OK with lending us the money, but the insurance don't want to know.

After talking to our new advisor, we are a bit more confident at getting this one. So fingers crossed

Try working for a bank, it does wonders to reduce rates and waive the administration fees

<this post rated 8.7 on the smugometer>

We're PRs, 10 months into being here, one salaried and one self-employed. Based on the discussions we've had so far with mortgage brokers etc, we can't get any type of mortgage for two years (once I've notched up 2 years worth of tax returns). I also phoned the Commonwealth Bank, who someone else on this thread says 'welcomes migrants' only to be told that "if you're not a citizen the Commonwealth Bank won't lend you a cent." Is this correct? Any thoughts anyone? We don't want to waste money renting for the next 2 years.

Well I can only speak from our experience and we had no problems whatsoever getting a mortgage from Comm.bank when we were PR's. Hubby was self employed when we applied too.

We aren't even PR and we got a mortgage no bother.

To the OP. We used a broker based at Hillarys and he was wonderful. Got us a good deal with NAB and would have no hesitation recommending him.

I used this lady and she is brilliant

Give her a call she started to arrange us a mortgage when I was still in NZ

Here's the thread I started

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=427054

LOL !

Hi Wendy

Sorry to jump in here but I have trying to find out the following question for a week.

When we come over to Perth we will only be able to put down about 10% deposit on a house and I believe that if you put down less than 20% you have to pay some sort of insurance. Could you give me a bit of info about it please and how much it would be (if you know).

Thanks in advance

Nikki

I think it is based on how much you borrow, we didnt have to pay any but we wanted a bit more on the morg it would have taken it over the 80% and the fee was going to be $3000+ on a $380,000 so it wasnt worth it.

Originally we used morgage choice and he went through everything and showed us on the pc all the morgage lenders and offers. You will be restricted on who will lend that much and will have great difficulty if under 6 months employment and needing over 80% but not impossiible. Also remember the first home buyers grant counts as deposit. Also our broker also pushed ANZ as a goodie, but we went with Newcastle perm on a 6.8 fixed for 3 years (believe they are doing 6.99 for 5 now) I think ANZ must pay more....

Jo

Thanks for that Jo, so in the grand scheme of things it would probably be wiser to rent for longer and try and save up so we would have 20% deposit to put down and then we would have a greater choice of lenders?

It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation as I don't mind renting for longer but because of the housing market in Perth we want to get on the property market as quick as possible but if we do then we would probably have to pay through the nose for a mortgage!

Thanks anyway and gives us food for thought.

Nikki