Mortgage broker Highgate

City of Vincent character controls, and the loan they change

Much of Highgate's original housing stock sits under character protection, and the City of Vincent takes its position on demolition and street-facing alterations seriously. Pulling down an intact character home here is a planning argument rather than a formality.

The finance consequence lands immediately. A knock-down-rebuild is funded as construction lending on a new dwelling, while a retained frontage with work behind it is construction lending against a house that has to stay standing.

Lenders are not equally comfortable with the second version. Keeping a hundred-year-old front half, a builder contract carrying provisional sums for whatever is behind the plaster, and an as-if-complete valuation on a part-old, part-new house are all things some lenders on the panel handle far better than others.

Flats over shopfronts, and how lenders read them

A fair share of Highgate's apartment stock is mixed-use, sitting over a cafe, a small bar or a shopfront on Beaufort Street or towards William Street. It is much of what makes the suburb walkable, and it is a genuine complication once the loan goes to a lender.

The zoning on the certificate of title, the amount of commercial floor space in the building and the internal size of the apartment all feed into the assessment. Two apartments of similar price in the same street can attract quite different lending ratios because of what is underneath them.

• Some lenders cap the loan-to-value ratio on an apartment above commercial premises, and a few will not take the security type at all
• Many lenders apply a minimum internal living area, commonly measured without the balcony or the car bay
• A licensed venue directly below tends to draw more caution than a shop or an office would
• Strata levies count as a commitment when your borrowing power is worked out
• Some lenders limit how many loans they will write inside one complex

None of this makes a Beaufort Street apartment unfinanceable, and these buildings are bought and sold constantly. It does mean the address should reach us before the offer does, because the right lender for this security is often not the one holding your current home loan.

What Highgate clients come to us for

The files here gather around three things. Buying into a suburb where very little comes up, funding work on a house that has to be kept, and lending against the strip itself.

The lots matter too. Highgate blocks are narrow, plenty of them are served by a rear laneway rather than a driveway, and some have no off-street parking at all. A valuer notes each of those, and the lender lends against what the valuer writes.

• Home loans for buyers competing for the small amount of Highgate stock that comes to market
• Construction finance for rear extensions and second storeys behind a retained character frontage
• Refinancing and equity release once the work on a Highgate cottage is finished
• Lending on mixed-use apartments above the Beaufort Street shops
• Commercial loans for the hospitality and retail tenancies along the strip