What What is one?

So an offset account is just a normal everyday bank account that's linked to your home loan.

So you can have your income paid into it, you can tap your card, you can pay your bills, you can move money around like any other transaction account would.

But in the background, it's connected to your home loan, like I said, so it reduces the interest that you pay on that loan every single day.

Now, the way it works is each day the banks are looking at two numbers.

They're looking at your loan balance and then they're looking at whatever's sitting in your offset account.

what they do is they subtract the offset balance from your loan and you only pay interest on what's left.

Can you sort of talk a bit to that? Yeah.

I'm starting to think I know how that works now but can you explain why that means that you can actually save on your mortgage?

Yeah, so look, it is something that comes up a lot online.

You'll see them videos where they say, if you switch to fortnightly repayments, you'll save thousands in interest and pay off your loan years earlier.

Now, that can be true, but it depends entirely on how your lender actually calculates those fortnightly repayments because there are actually two methods that the banks use.

Now, the first is what we call the half monthly method.

Now, when they use this method, your lender simply divides your monthly repayment in half for fortnightly repayments.

That means over a year you end up making 26 half repayments, which is effectively 13 full monthly repayments instead of 12.

So how do you as a broker though, how do you help first home buyers decide which option suits them? Because of course there's risk either way, right?

So how did you get involved with it? How did it start?

So I was involved in a come and try day, which is similar to what we had before the game started on the weekend.

And once you're involved in one of those and you get around the club environment, they can choose to draft you or pick you up, whichever way they see fit, if you fit onto the list sort of thing.

So it's very, you have to sort of wait and buy the time for a come and try day to come about at your chosen club or at any club really.

And then you can sort of get your foot in the door and become, you know, a part of it.

Just on the Collingwood side, and well, all side, but I imagine you're from all over, all over Victoria?

Yeah, so... majority of us are actually from sort of wallen so this side of melbourne but which is helpful for me because we train in epping which is nice to not be training in the city but yeah majority of us are from wallen but we've also had players in the past from say taralga and and those sorts of places so they do come from everywhere

But what's a bank actually looking at when they're assessing your income?

Yeah, so you're right, Megan.

Income is the biggest driver of your borrowing capacity, but it's not just how much you're earning.

Banks also care about how stable and reliable that income is.

And this is why you can see two people earning the same amount.

They can get very different outcomes depending on how long they've been in their role, whether it's base salary, overtime, bonuses or self-employed income, and then how consistent that income has been over time.

Now, for PAYG employees, banks will usually want to see at least your last two pay slips.

How do the banks view that? And what other kind of debts are they looking at?

Now, I should point out, you do have a disability, don't you? You're in a wheelchair?

I do.

So I have cerebral palsy, which can affect everyone a bit differently.

But for me, if you think about it like a light switch, my brain is telling my muscles, particularly my lower limbs, to be on all the time and tense.

And it does affect my upper limbs a little bit with hand-eye coordination.

So things like handballing a football or catching a football can be a bit difficult at times.

But CP does affect everyone differently.

Absolutely.

And, and let's just go through some of them now.

Yeah, I think you're right there, Chris, and we'll jump into it, but just to touch on your point, you're right.

We can help all over Australia, and every w- every first-home buyer I speak to is in a different situation, right? So it's not just this cookie-cutter approach across Australia.

You're trying to buy into different markets, you're looking at different kind of assets and different situations, so we can definitely help wherever you are in Australia.

But if we kind of break down the pathways, and we'll go through them, kind of the main ones that you can access, I'll give a bit of explanation around what to consider, and then we can kind of debrief a- and chat about it, Chris.

But the first one that we've been talking about a bit is the first-home 5% deposit scheme.

Now, just as an overview, this, this scheme allows you to purchase with as little as a 5% deposit, and you don't pay any lender's mortgage insurance.

Um, what, what's some options they've got?