Where to get help choosing your home loan

It turns out there are a lot more mortgage choices available than just the home loan offered at your local bank branch. Working out the best mortgage option to suit your needs can be a challenge, so you may need a little help along the way.

There are also several potential sources of help available when you’re selecting your next home loan, including:

Comparison tables 

Found on comparison sites such as RateCity, these tables put the essential details of different home loan deals up front so you can compare them side by side. A quick glance at a comparison table can give you an idea of some of the leading offers currently on the mortgage market.

But not all home loans are created equal, and not every mortgage may suit your needs as a borrower. To get the most out of a comparison table, it’s important to adjust the filters according to your preferences, so you can confidently compare apples with apples.

One simple way to use a comparison table is to rank home loans by their interest rate, but this may not accurately reflect the full cost of each loan. The comparison rate combines each home loan’s interest rate with its standard fees and charges, to give you a more clear idea of which home loans could end up costing more in total.

Of course, not all home loan fees and charges are included in the comparison rate, and there may also be other features and benefits that could affect the value offered by different deals. One simple way to estimate the overall value offered by different home loans is to look at RateCity’s Real Time Ratings™, which combine each loan’s cost and flexibility into a simple star rating, which is updated daily.

Leaderboards 

Another quick way to compare home loans for specific purposes, RateCity’s Home Loan Leaderboards rank mortgage deals in a variety of categories, from refinance home loans, to home loans from big banks, to interest only investment home loans.

Mortgages in each category are ranked daily based on their Real Time Ratings™, so you can be confident that these home loan deals are currently at the top of their field.

Of course, it’s still important to look more closely at each home loan offer and consider your personal financial situation before making a decision.

Awards 

You can often be confident that a mortgage offer is outstanding in its field if it has won awards. Several comparison sites and consumer advocate organisations choose to bestow awards on different home loan deals, based on a range of criteria.

For example, if a mortgage offer is ranked consistently high in the RateCity Leaderboards for six months or more, it may become eligible to be considered for a RateCity Gold Award.

While it’s still important to compare home loans and consider your financial situation before making a decision, an award-winning home loan could have points in its favour when making your comparison.

Calculators 

So how can you work out if a home loan may be right for you and your financial situation? One option could be to use a home loan calculator to estimate the cost of mortgage repayments, and see how this figure changes when you adjust the interest rate, loan amount, term length or other factors. You could also use the borrowing power calculator function to reverse this process, by entering the repayments you can afford to make and from there finding a loan amount.

There’s also a difference between how much money you’d like to borrow to buy a property, and how much money a bank or mortgage lender may be willing to lend you. RateCity’s How Much Can I Borrow calculator can take some basic details of your income and expense and estimate how large a home loan you may be able to access, though it’s still important to check with a lender before you apply.

RateCity’s calculators could also help you to:

• Find out how much you could save on interest by refinancing and switching home loans
• Discover how much faster you could pay off your property by refinancing
• Work out the cost of accessing the equity in your property when refinancing
• Calculate the cost of stamp duty on your property purchase
• Estimate the cost of Lender’s Mortgage Insurance (LMI) if your deposit is on the low side
• Forecast if your mortgage repayments are likely to put you at risk of mortgage stress

Mortgage Brokers 

While there are plenty of online resources and other support available when it comes to choosing a home loan, there’s nothing quite like some personal advice from a professional. Mortgage brokers are home loan experts, whose job is to connect borrowers who want mortgages with lenders who provide them.

Just some of the ways a mortgage broker could help you when choosing a home loan includes:

• Looking at your personal financial situation and recommending home loan offers that may help you reach your financial goals.
• Offering access to special mortgage deals that are exclusive to brokers and aren’t typically advertised
• Negotiating with a lender on your behalf to help you get a deal that better suits your needs
• Taking care of the application paperwork
• Keeping an eye out for future opportunities to refinance

Compare home loans in Australia