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What happens when you're Pre-Approved?

Once you have pre-approval, it’s time to look for the perfect first home for you! This is the really exciting part of the process and by now we’ve given you all the tools you need to find the right house for the right price. When making an offer, it’s most often a good idea to include a finance condition, often to give you some time to apply for your Kiwisaver, and for us to work towards an unconditional loan offer for you. What this means is that the bank has given final approval to lend ...

What's a pre-approval & how does it work?

In our line of work, we talk about "pre-approval" a lot - but what does it actually mean for you?Put simply, a pre-approved loan is when a bank provides an offer for you where they agree to lend you a certain amount, providing you can meet the requirements they have.After the first chat we have with you, whether this is over phone, email or in person, we'll discuss the information you need to get pre-approval, and will normally work towards this initially, to give you some certainty around the a...

Renovating? How do you borrow for that?

With the costs of new builds escalating, we're starting to see more and more people renovating their existing homes. It makes sense, especially if you've earned some equity through capital gain and you like your location. So how do you go about getting funds to renovate? There are two ways to approach this......

Employee Package Discounts

Today we want to clear up some of the myths surrounding special employee benefits and discounts for your home loan. Often when we are discussing home loan options with people they mention that because they work at a certain company (Fonterra, Teachers, Police etc) they get a special discount with a certain bank. This is generally fuelled by some free muffins and a talk over morning tea at their workplace from one of the local bank managers. Although all banks do provide certain workplace package...

What is LVR & how does it affect my next steps?

LVR - It's a term that's been thrown around in the media a lot over the last couple of years and I've come to realize that as an industry we don't do a great job of explaining exactly what it is and how it effects you when you're borrowing money. In this blog we'll hopefully make the rules and regulations around LVR's a lot clearer.LVR - Loan to Value RatioSimple - It's the amount of your loan, relative to the value of your property. If you owe $80K and your property is worth $100K then your LVR...

Build Finance? We're doing it ourselves!

It's hard to beat unwrapping that out of the box and moving in to something that's designed and built just for you! But just like colours, door handles and most other things when building a house, there are lots of different finance options and ways that things can be done in regard to how the house is paid for. This is where we come in - My Mortgage's job is to provide some clarity on which options are available to you and explain exactly how that process works. We've outlined a few of the key ...

First Home? We've got a specialist to help!

Buying your first home is about the biggest step you're going to make in your life. We know there is a bunch of flash ads out there on TV and lots of confusing information coming your way so we want to help by providing some independent advice on your Home Loan options and guiding you through the process. What have we got that the others don't? We've got a first home specialist Mortgage Broker - That's Claire Martin. At 27, Claire is not one of these old hands sitting behind her desk and talking...

Tyre Kickers Welcome! Come one, come all.

We had a great email the other day from a young chap who hadn't been managing his finances but had come to the conclusion that he wanted to do something about it and get himself a house. He was a bit sheepish to ask for advice at first but after spending some good time with him making a plan we think he'll be able to get in to his own home in around 12 months time. That got us thinking we've all got to start somewhere and if it's buying a house then we'd like talking to the team at My Mortgage t...

The "Robin Hood" theory... is that us?

We've had a few laughs with a client this week when he remarked "so you're pretty much like Robin Hood" after we were able to negotiate a good deal with the bank - Well we wouldn't say what we do is that noble and aside from a dress up for the Rugby Sevens a few years ago we've never been Robin Hood but.... it did get us thinking about our examples of that theory and how it's a pretty simple way of explaining what we do....

New years Resolution - Get debt free!

Whether you've got some credit cards or a personal loan that you want to knock on the head or you're wanting to make some serious inroads on repaying your mortgage - We can help! I think this is one of the more important new years resolutions you can make and by starting with a plan and some good budgeting early in the year you can set yourself up well to be celebrating some success by Christmas....

Is a credit score important to me?

As we lead up to Christmas the advertisements for cheap and easy credit are flowing quickly. One comment I get a lot from people is that they've "got a good credit rating" as they've had a number of loans in the past which have all be repaid....

Fix now and relax

At the risk of sounding like a Grinch this close to Christmas... Interest rates are on the rise and we'll likely see some more increases in interest rates in 2017.But like the jolly fat man this Christmas I come bearing gifts. That gift is this advice (and the helpful service) of suggesting you get in now and fix any loans that you currently have floating or are going to come off their fixed terms early in the new year.The two year fixed rate across most major banks has increased around .25% in ...

What if you don't fit at the bank?

What if you've tried your bank but they won't give you a mortgage for whatever reason... What options do you have then?Although 95% of the loans we do are through the main banks we like to have an lending option up our sleeve to suit everyone. In this blog we detail some of the reasons why you might not fit a main bank and what the other options look like....

Did you pay more because you had less deposit?

If you've bought a property in the last few years using less than 20% deposit then you've almost certainly been paying a much higher interest rate than you would have got with more equity... but even though your house has most likely shot up in value the bank will likely still be charging you this much higher rate.It's time to look at how you could save a lot on your mortgage, just by reducing your interest rate.Depending on the bank you're with this will either be a "margin" added to your inter...

What's up with interest rates?

"Up" seems to be the operative word this week unfortunately! We've seen most major lenders bump their medium term (2 and 3 year) fixed rates up by about .10%. Why this is and what you can do about it are explained below.This is entirely unexpected to most consumers as the media keeps reporting future OCR drops and the housing boom but in reality there are definitely some strong factors at play in pushing the cost of this pricing up. The three major reasons being quoted by the banks are:...

Fair Go? You can count on us!

We caught an interesting bit on Fair Go on Monday night. In summary a young couple had received advice and a loan offer from a Mortgage Adviser and that Adviser subsequently charged them a fee....we'd like to clear up our position on providing a free service.When Adam set out to create My Mortgage in 2012 one of the cornerstones of our philosophy was providing a free service and we stick by that. In the first 3 years we did not charge a single client and in the past 12 months we have billed thre...

Information we need for New loan applications

At My Mortgage we're all about cutting through bank jargon and explaining all the aspects of your home loan in your terms. We're the types who'll stick with you, from your first purchase to your last; if you need finance, we'll be there to help. We'll make arranging finance nice and easy, so you can concentrate on the really fun part of buying – finding the perfect home for you!...

We do more than you think

A few weeks ago we went to visit a very good client who we hadn't seen in a while, and the talk came around to the fact they had just fixed a portion of their loan with their bank; and when we heard the rate we nearly fell over - a full 0.7% more than they should have been paying! All of this came to pass because our client didn't know refixing was part of the service we provide our clients. And there's a few other less obvious parts of our service we think you should know about;...

Why 10% deposit is the new 20%

In an attempt to be the Mortgage "Knights in Shining Armour" we've written this article on how you can buy a house with less than 20% deposit.Since the Reserve Bank imposed the restriction on lending to people with less than 20% deposit in 2013 there has been a lot of changes in the options for first home buyers. As always, we are committed to finding the right solution so let's kick off with explaining the restrictions then we'll look at ways around them and how we can help....

It's a fun step to take!

For many young Kiwi's, buying their first home is one of the top five on their guide to being a grown up, alongside getting their first job, travelling, getting married, and perhaps even having children. The timing is different for everybody, and we have helped first home buyers as young as 18 right up to 50 year olds to purchase their first home.Many people think that buying their first home is big and scary and will take a lot of time and effort. It doesn't have to be this way, it's meant to b...

Look out for your mates!

Having a couple of wines with some friends over the weekend and a common question came up... "How do I know which bank is right for me? I've got one now, why not just get my mortgage from them?" We think we had the best analogy yetThink of a Home Loan like a jacket. Essentially when you step outside in this cold weather. Then think of a mortgage broker as as a fashion guru (a hard ask when Adam one wears jeans and a shirt 99% of the time!) Even as a fairly simple country lad Adam's got a wa...

Welcome to your New Home

In addition to the great news regarding the relaxing of the deposit restrictions recently (check out the blog on this), we have some more good news - If you thought there was no movement on the 20% deposit requirement which some lenders require, think again! Enter Welcome Home Loan - which has been helping out plenty of our clients who have a small deposit and meet certain criteria buy their first home. Essentially the way it works is that the Housing New Zealand agree to guarantee the loan, and...

The changing face of banking

There has been a lot of coverage in the media recently about branches shutting in small rural towns which has rightly irked a lot of locals. To us there is more to this story in the changing face of banking and we can guarantee that in 10 years time things will be a lot different to how they are now. Service is the most important thing to us so we'd like to show how we fit in to the ever evolving banking model and how you can be assured that by working with the My Mortgage team you will always b...

It's ok to ask!

We call it the teenager effect, we all know that mumbly "leave me alone, I know what I'm doing" when in reality they lack the background understanding and knowledge to do it right. A lot of people are the same with their mortgage.It may come as no surprise that Adam has managed to relate the arrival of our first baby a few weeks ago to getting a mortgage.Simply because you have one it doesn't make you an expert. It's definitely a good idea to ask more experienced people for help! Adam had the an...

A hand up for First Home Buyers

While investors are grumbling about the changes to the deposit requirements for Rental Properties (me included) there was some good news this week for first home buyers as the availability of the Homestart Grant has been increased which we hope will open up opportunities for more first time buyers to get in to their first home!...