Home Loans & Mortgages

Don’t buy a new home as your first home.
If you were buying a home 10 years ago, this would not make sense. But things are different today. Land prices are killing new home sales and only people that have made equity in the first home can build new today.

So my first advice to you is to buy a bargain established home. There are plenty to choose from and they are below replacement cost. You get more for less, and in less time.

After all Westpac has pulled itself from near bankruptcy in the early nineties to be a contender Australia’s biggest bank. Mainly at the cost of its mortgage holders, during the Global Financial Crisis, and the “Banana smoothie” scandal. [Free publicity is good publicity, and who doesn't like a banana smoothie Gail, right?] So there’s a missed branding opportunity. “The Banana Smoothie Bank”. [smoothie in more ways than one it would seem]

In the nineteen eigthies a local bank manager working out what I could afford to borrow divvied up my pay packet this way: “A third for the taxman, a third for me … and a third for you.” The rule-of-thumb that you can afford to devote about 30 per cent of your gross or pre-tax [...]

If Obama’s the answer, then what is the question?
It’s the economy, Dummy!

Kevin.Rudd’s increase of the first home owners grant is about shoring up jobs and the economy, and increasing home loan activity for buyers and sellers.

EXTRA rules imposed by local councils such as those on increased ceiling heights and noise protection can add as much as 14 per cent to home building costs.