How to get a home loan in Perth

Step one: start an application

The first step is a conversation, not a form. You tell us what you are trying to do and roughly where your finances sit, and we tell you whether it stacks up.

From there we work out a borrowing position. That means looking at your income, your existing commitments, your living costs and your deposit, and testing them against how different lenders assess each one.

Lenders do not treat those inputs the same way. Overtime, bonuses, self-employed income and rental income are all handled differently from one credit policy to the next, and that difference alone can move your number considerably.

What you need to have ready

• Photo identification for everyone who will be on the loan
• Your last few payslips, or two years of tax returns and financials if you are self-employed
• Recent statements for your everyday accounts and savings
• Statements for any credit cards, personal loans, car finance or buy-now-pay-later accounts
• A rough idea of your deposit, where it is held and where it came from
• A sense of what you are looking for, even a loose one

If some of that is missing, start anyway. Half the value of this step is finding out what you still need, and it is far better to find out now than after an offer is accepted.

Step two: get pre-approved

A pre-approval is a lender looking at your finances and saying, in writing, what it would be prepared to lend you. It is not a guarantee and it is not the loan itself, but it changes how you shop.

We package the file, submit it to the lender we agreed on, and answer the credit assessor's questions as they come. If something needs explaining, we explain it up front rather than waiting to be asked.

What comes back is a written pre-approval, subject to lender approval, a valuation of the property you eventually choose, and your circumstances staying broadly as they are. Read those conditions properly. They are the difference between a pre-approval that holds and one that does not.

Why it matters at the offer stage

• You make offers knowing what you have to work with, instead of guessing
• Agents and sellers take a pre-approved buyer more seriously than one who is still thinking about finance
• You find out about a problem in your file while it can still be fixed, not after a contract is signed
• You stop looking at properties that were never going to work, which saves a lot of weekends

Step three: get officially approved

Formal approval, sometimes called unconditional approval, is the lender committing to the specific loan on the specific property. It comes after you have a signed contract.

The lender orders a valuation of the property. That valuation belongs to the lender, not to you and not to us, and a valuer who lands under the contract price can change how much the lender will advance.

If that happens, there are usually options. Contributing more deposit, asking for the valuation to be reviewed with better comparable sales, or moving the file to a lender whose valuer panel sees the property differently are all things we have done.

What we are doing while you wait

This is the stage where people feel most in the dark, so it is the stage we talk to you most. We track the file with the lender, supply anything further the assessor asks for, and tell you the moment the position changes.

We will also tell you if it is not going well. A broker who only rings with good news is a broker you cannot plan around.

Step four: prepare for settlement

Once the loan is formally approved, the lender issues the loan documents. We go through them with you before you sign anything, because a signature on a credit contract is not something to give casually.

We check that the loan you are being offered is the one that was agreed. The rate type, the loan term, the offset or redraw arrangement, the fees and the repayment structure all get read against what we discussed.

You will also know what money is due and to whom. Between the deposit, the balance at settlement, government duty and the various fees, the total is rarely the number people have in their head.

Who else is involved

Settlement day itself is usually quiet from where you sit. The parties exchange funds and documents, the title changes hands, and you get the keys.

Step five: stay up to date

A loan is not a one-off transaction and we do not treat it as one. Rates move, lender pricing shifts, and your circumstances in five years will not be your circumstances today.

So we keep the loan under review. If the rate you are paying has drifted well behind what is available, or a different structure would suit you better, you hear it from us rather than working it out yourself later.

Sometimes the honest answer is to stay where you are. Break costs, fees and a fixed term can all mean a lower advertised rate would not actually leave you better off, and we will say so.

• A review as your fixed period approaches its end, before you roll to a revert rate
• A look at whether your equity position could open up better pricing
• A conversation before you buy the next property, not after
• The same broker, so you are not explaining your file to a stranger

The parts nobody controls, and what we do about them

There are three things in every file that are outside anybody's hands. The lender's credit policy, the valuation, and the lender's own processing queue.

What a broker can do is choose the lender whose policy already fits you, build the file so the assessor has no reason to come back with questions, and know early when a file is heading the wrong way.

What no broker can do is make a bank approve something it does not want to approve. Anyone promising otherwise is selling you something, and it is worth knowing which of those two you are talking to.