August 26, 2014 by Rikki Stanley
Once your Mortgage Choice home loan expert has done the leg work for you by comparing the hundreds of home loan options out there (from up to 27 leading lenders, including the major banks) often the hardest part of refinancing is already done.
It’s usually very easy from there to determine if your existing home loan is still right for you, or whether you might be better off financially if you switch.
Switch for the right reasons
To ensure you are refinancing for the right reasons, make sure you check that the long term savings clearly outweigh the short-term costs involved. To see more on the benefits and costs involved, see our previous blog:
Why refinance? The costs, savings and your home loan health checked.
If you have decided that refinancing is the best option for you, what’s next?
How to Refinance – the process:
1. Decide on the loan and lender. You broker is the best person to help you weigh up the pros and cons of each lender and product most suitable to you.
2. Complete the application - Let your Mortgage Choice broker do the paperwork for you. Refinancing works almost the same as applying for the original loan, there will be an application form and you will require supporting documentation to go with it.
3. Provide your paperwork to your broker - Supporting documents will vary depending on the lender, but as a general rule, you will need:
- Recent payslips
- Statements for your existing home loan and any other loans, credit cards, store cards, and/or vehicle leases.
- Your latest council rates notice
4. Approval - If you are changing to a different lender, you will be sent loan documents to sign, in the same fashion you would if you were applying for a new loan. You will also need to have your property valued, which your broker will organise through the lender.
5. Settlement - When your refinanced loan settles, if you are staying with your current lender, often your lender will simply pay out your current loan on your behalf and you can commence repayments on your new loan. If you are refinancing to a new lender, the title deeds to your property will be passed over to your new lender and a Discharge of Mortgage document will be lodged with the Land Titles Office.
Refinancing Tools and Guides:
Calculators
Mortgage Choice offers a variety of handy calculators to use for all sorts of refinancing scenarios. The three we suggest to start with can be found below:
Guides
1. If you are thinking of switching lenders and would like more information on the costs, steps and reasoning involved in a guide format that you can read at your leisure, please download our
2. To determine if your current home loan still suits your current and future needs, download and complete our
This is a one page document that also includes a handy table to help you gather some of the financial information you will need when you do ask your broker to help you investigate your options further.
3. If some of the jargon involved with refinancing is like a foreign language to you, check out our link to
Free home loan health check:
To determine if refinancing is the right option for you, Mortgage Choice brokers offer a free home loan health check service. There is competition out there for your mortgage between lenders. You might be surprised by the different choices available to you.
The home loan health check basically lets your broker see if your current loan is still the best one out there for you, and/or checks if there Is a loan product out there more suited to your budget and needs, and even better, is at a potentially lower cost to you.
With interest rates remaining at historic lows, it makes sense to see if refinancing could work for you.
For further information on this or any other topic, please contact your mobile mortgage choice broker, Daniel Meade on:
Phone 07 3833 9666,
Email daniel.meade@mortgagechoice.com.au
Or simply click on the contact us tab on this page.
If this information has been helpful to you or might be relevant to someone you know, please share it.
Daniel is looking forward to helping you refinance and save today. Thanks for reading our blog.
Important information
This article is for general information purposes only. It has been prepared without considering your objectives, financial situation or needs. You should, before acting on the advice, consider its appropriateness to your circumstances.
