Mortgage Broker in Coburg

Standard residential lending, including purchases and refinances, costs you nothing. The lender pays our commission at settlement and it is not added to your rate or your loan balance. Initial conversations, borrowing capacity assessments and pre-approvals are all free whether or not they proceed to a loan. Fees apply only on commercial and complex business facilities, where the amount is agreed with you in writing before any work begins. If a broker in this market is asking a residential client for an upfront engagement fee, ask them exactly what it buys you.

There are two routes and the right one depends on the scale of the work. For a straightforward renovation, generally under about $150,000 and not involving major structural change, an equity release against your existing home is usually simplest: the lender revalues the property, releases the available equity above the 80 per cent mark as a single amount, and you manage the builder yourself. For a large extension or anything requiring council approval and a fixed-price building contract, a [construction loan](/construction-loans) with progressive drawdowns is the correct product, and the lender releases funds in stages as the work is completed. The second route costs more in administration but funds a much larger project. We will model both against your plans.

Not for a standard purchase or refinance, where the lender is concerned with the property's value and marketability rather than what you may build on it. Where it matters is renovation and development funding, because a heritage overlay restricts what can be done and a lender assessing a construction loan will want to see the permits already granted before advancing funds against the finished value. Valuers also take overlays into account, so an on-completion valuation for a heritage-constrained project can land below what the works cost. Sort the planning approval first and the finance conversation becomes far simpler.

Often, but it needs the right lender and the check should happen before you sign. Many lenders apply a minimum internal living area, commonly around 40 to 50 square metres excluding balcony and car space, below which they will either decline the security or require a much larger deposit. Some also apply postcode-level exposure caps limiting how many apartments they will hold in a given area, which affects the inner north. Converted and heritage-listed developments such as Pentridge Village raise additional questions about the strata structure and building works history. Send us the address and floor plan and we will confirm which lenders will accept it before you commit.

Yes, along with Pascoe Vale, Glenroy and Fawkner. Coburg North shares Coburg's period housing character while Brunswick to the south and Preston to the east both move into a higher price bracket with far more apartment stock, which shifts which lenders are workable. The practical difference across these suburbs is not distance but security type, since a single-fronted weatherboard and a fifty-square-metre apartment are assessed completely differently even on the same street. Call 0485 011 020 with the address and we will tell you what applies.

Usually four to six weeks, and the delay almost always sits with your existing lender rather than the new one. Application and approval typically run one to two weeks with complete documents, and the valuation happens alongside. The discharge is the slow step, because your current lender must process a discharge authority and those queues routinely take two to three weeks on their own. We lodge the discharge authority as soon as formal approval lands rather than waiting for it to be requested, which usually takes a fortnight out of the process. Before any of that, we ask your existing lender to reprice, which costs nothing and sometimes removes the need to move at all.