Refinancing your home loan involves comparing  your existing home or investment loan with what is available in the wider market and if it makes financial sense it is swapped out with a new mortgage agreement typically with a new lender.. This process allows you to take advantage of better interest rates, more favourable loan terms, or access equity in your property to spend on almost anything you like. At Ammolite Finance, we understand that your financial situation and needs can change over time, and refinancing offers an opportunity to optimise your home loan. Here are some ways refinancing may benefit you:

• Lower Interest Rates: If market conditions have shifted or your lending capacity and credit score is good, refinancing can lead to lower interest rates and cheaper monthly repayments. You can use the monthly savings and plough them back into the loan to help speed up your debt reduction plans or use the savings for any other of life’s demands.
• Accessing Equity: If your property has increased in value or you’ve made significant repayments, you may have built up equity. Equity is simply the difference between the value of your property and the amount owing on it. Refinancing allows you to access this equity, which you can use for home improvements, investments, consolidating debts, or other personal or financial needs.
• Consolidating Debts: If you have other debts with higher-interest rates, such as credit cards, car loans or personal loans, refinancing can be an effective way to consolidate these debts into your home loan. By doing so, you’ll have a single, more manageable repayment at a potentially lower interest rate but this needs to be applied with caution as you don’t want these typically shorter loan terms being paid over a much longer loan term associated with a normal home or investment loan
• Changing Loan Features: Refinancing enables you to switch to a loan product with features that better suit your current circumstances. For example, you may want to move from a variable rate to a fixed rate, or vice versa, or set up an offset home loan which is a linked savings account that does not pay interest but the balance instead ‘offsets’ the balance of the mortgage loan which in turn can be an effective structure to pay off your home loan sooner.
• Debt Repayment Strategies: Our mortgage brokers can work with you to develop a personalised debt repayment strategy, which may involve refinancing at strategic intervals to optimise your financial outcomes.

Before proceeding with refinancing, it’s essential to consider potential costs, such as exit fees from your current lender, application fees, legal fees and whether any other short term offers exist such as honeymoon interest rate periods or cashback offers from a shortlisted lender. Our experienced team at Ammolite Finance will conduct a comprehensive assessment of your financial situation using industry leading tools, guide you through the process, and help you determine if refinancing is the right choice for you.

Many people table the idea of using bridging finance  but few really understand how its operates or what it effectively achieves. At its simplest it enables a home buyer to purchase a new property before the sale of their existing home. More often than not it is owner occupiers rather than investors who will use this product.

The finance structure basically enables you to borrow up to the full purchase price of the new property plus all stamp duties and closing costs like stamp duity, legals. Generally the lender will give you between six and twelve months to sell your current property and release its equity to enable the current loan to be closed out and use any surplus money left over to reduce the bridging loan on the new property plus any interest fees and charges. Generally the interest on the bridging loan is capitalising (interest is added to the loan). Your responsibility is to only meet the repayments on the existing loan during the bridging time frame. A few important things to consider;

• You generally need a fairly good amount of equity in your current property to consider the use of bridging finance especially if you new purchase property is likely to be more expensive than your selling property
• Some lenders require servicing evidence (afforrdability testing) on the end debt position after your current home is sold but other lenders require your servicing evidence to be on the peak debt amount which makes it difficult to secure support with such lenders
• Interest rates on bridging finance are generally not discounted and are higher for the term you might have bridging for
• The bridging finance interest calculation only starts when the target purchase property settles so if you can negotiate a long enough settlement you might be able to secure a quick sale on your current property which maye minimise or completely eliminate the time frame you need to be exposed to a bridging loan structure

As you can see there are quite a few variables to bridging finance and not all lenders and policies are created the same so get in contact with us here.