Mortgage broker West Leederville

What the housing stock here does to a valuation

Most of West Leederville was subdivided long before the war, so the standard block is narrow, deep and green title. The houses on them are largely Federation and interwar cottages, a good number of them extended at the rear at some point in the past thirty years.

Valuers handle that stock by leaning hard on recent sales in the same few streets. Where a cottage has been renovated properly and its neighbours have not, the valuation often lands under what the owner expects.

That matters most when you are refinancing. A lender lends against the valuation, not against your renovation invoices, and the gap between the two is where a refinance quietly stalls.

• Recent comparable sales in your street, not just the suburb
• Council approvals for any rear extension or second storey
• Whether the property sits inside a character or heritage area
• The land component, which is most of the value on these lots
• Any structural work a valuer will flag on a hundred-year-old house

Infill, subdivision and building at the back

The Town of Cambridge has allowed a steady amount of infill through this suburb, and you can see the result street by street. A single cottage on a wide lot, then a pair of two-storey grouped dwellings next door, then another cottage.

Funding that work is a different product to a home loan. Land equity usually carries the deposit, and the build itself draws down in stages against a fixed-price contract with a registered builder.

1. 1

   Confirm what the block can actually take

   Zoning, lot size and the local planning rules decide how many dwellings are possible. Get that answer before you get attached to a plan.

2. 2

   Value the land as it stands

   The existing equity is what funds the deposit and the early stages. A lender needs a current figure, not the one from your last refinance.

3. 3

   Take the builder contract to a lender who reads them

   Fixed-price contracts, provisional sums and owner-supplied items are treated differently across the panel. Some lenders will not fund a build with much left provisional.

4. 4

   Draw down in stages, and hold a buffer

   Progress payments follow slab, frame, lock-up, fit-out and completion. Costs move on infill sites, so a contingency outside the loan is sensible.

Rear lots come with their own wrinkle. A lender is often asked to value a lot that has no title yet, and not every lender on the panel will do it.

Apartments near the station and along Cambridge Street

The newer apartment stock sits close to West Leederville station and along the Cambridge Street strip. It suits downsizers who want to stay in the area and buyers who want in without paying for land.

Lenders look at apartments through a different lens to houses. Internal living area, the number of units in the building and how much the lender has already written in the same complex all come into it.

• Many lenders set a minimum internal living area, commonly measured excluding the balcony and car bay
• Some cap how many loans they will write inside a single complex
• Strata levies count as a commitment when your borrowing power is calculated
• Off-the-plan purchases are valued again at settlement, not at contract

None of that makes an apartment hard to finance. It does mean the lender who was right for your last house may not be the right one here, which is exactly the sort of thing a panel of forty solves.

What West Leederville clients ask us for

The work here splits fairly evenly between people buying their first place in the area, owners releasing equity to renovate, and small infill projects.

• Home loans for buyers competing for character stock close to the city
• Refinancing and equity release after a renovation has lifted the value
• Construction finance for knock-down-rebuild and rear grouped dwellings
• Development finance where a block supports more than two dwellings
• Commercial loans for the small business premises along Cambridge Street

Being based here is genuinely useful for the first of those. We know which streets sell well, which ones valuers are cautious on, and roughly what a place will do before the report comes back.