If you happen to be a salary earner, proving your income is relatively easy. As long as your Employer issues decent quality Payslips, you can provide the 3 most recent…
The banks are currently overwhelmed by hardship applications as a result of the Level 4 lockdown for Covid-19. In this article we look at what your options are and why…
Article current as of 27th March 2020. With the recent announcements with bank relief packages and mortgage holidays, we are getting a lot questions about who qualifies and how to…
Previously, we’ve looked at the difference between First Home Grants and KiwiSaver. Another often confused, pairing is the First Home Loan (previously known as the Welcome Home Loan) facility and…
Banks are businesses and their goal is to make money and become the leading brand in the industry. This is the same goal as most other businesses and their reputation…
We are entering an unprecedented time. The Reserve Bank has announced an Official Cash Rate drop of 0.75% leaving the cash rate at a historic low of 0.25%. Most economists…
The Reserve Bank today announced that the OCR would be reduced by 0.75% to a new level of 0.25%. International markets around the world have been severely affected by the…
First home buyers are often nervous about the size of their Student Loan and how it will affect their chance of getting a mortgage. But how much does it really…
Kiwis like Credit Cards… a lot. If you’ve got 10 minutes, you could get one online right now (don’t). And the price for easily-acquired, unsecured debt is usually ~20% p.a.…
It’s the time of the year when the Mortgage Lab buffs up our Crystal Ball, gazes into the infinitely complicated world of economics and comes up with sufficiently generic interest…
The best thing about owning your own home is that you can decorate it however you choose. Unfortunately there are some less exciting things that every homeowner needs to do…
If you have less than 20% deposit, you are referred to (by the banks) as a Low Equity (or Deposit) Borrower. You are required to meet a different set of…
Think of the Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) like this: What percentage of the house is covered by the mortgage… Or, in other words, what percentage of the house does…
Smoking is a difficult habit to quit. There are many services that can help you, the most commonly known is Quitline, and each person will quit for different reasons. For…
What is the OCR? The OCR is an interest rate set by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand which defines the wholesale price of borrowed money. This directly affects the…
First home buyers can often get tangled up in the pile of new concepts to learn. In this article, we explore the basics of withdrawing your KiwiSaver and meeting the…
So you’re looking to purchase. Could a flatmate help you purchase a more expensive house? Will a bank take that extra income into account? How much interest will flatmate income…
In this day and age, where house prices are rapidly increasing, it is easy to think that home ownership is an impossible dream. Before I became a mortgage adviser I…