sophiedb

I know this is a Brit board, but that's me - my partner's the Kiwi

We're thinking of buying a house or maybe land in NZ, but we live in Australia and he hasn't been working in NZ since 1996. He does still have a bank account (loooooow) and life insurance policy based over there, but no real financial activity.

Can anyone give us an idea of whether anyone would approve a mortgage for us, or would we have to actually move to NZ and establish a new credit history first?

cheers, Soph

ratliffe

Hello soph
I live in the U.K at the moment with hopes to live in nz by sept/oct time, i had a mortgage offer whilst still living here in the u.k at 67%
if you live in n.z but no job they may offer you a 80% mortgage but if you get yourself a job and keep it for 3 months they will offer you a 90%
we'll thats what they offered me anyway
Hope this helps
Gavin

nzinfocenter

In general 90% mortgages are only for properties in town; for rural properties it is 70%.
Nice bit of logic was displayed when I asked my bank manager why that difference was; answer: because rural properties don't sell that easy....no, I bet they don't if you need a bigger deposit, duh....

Kindest,

Jan

Don

Somewhat different feedback from my two banks. I had a chat with 2 bank managers (National and ANZ) while I was over there and they said they would normally never lend on a mortgage unless the principal was in NZ work. Stretching a point, they said that worldwide income would also count if you were NZ resident but they wouldn't lend just on the strength of other assets held by you. Ie you might be a millionaire but they wouldn't take a charge on your other property and lend if you couldn't provide proof of income to service the loan. Having said that, they both said they only needed 3 weeks pay slips as poof of income which sounded somewhat easier than in the UK.

Cheers - Don