Important Things To Know About Home Loans For Expats

Transcript

So expat lending is something where really what you want to be doing is managing your expectations. What we see is lots of customers who come in and they look at traditional rates offered to someone who is working in Australia year and buying a property in Australia and think, well, that's going to apply to me, I just need a loan. But I happen to be working overseas and earning money, usually in another currency. And what you need to think about is that in expat lending, there are really 3 things that are likely going to happen. First of all, the banks aren't going to lend you as much money. So instead of lending you 80 or 90%, they might only lend you 70% of the value of the property. The second thing is they won't take all of your income into account. In a lot of cases, if you're earning $100,000 Australian or the equivalent overseas, they might only count 90 or $80,000 of that when working out how much they're going to lend you. And in some cases, they won't lend based on the type of currency that you're actually getting paid in as well. So this is often a factor. And then the third thing is that for lenders who will accept a broader range of currencies or perhaps won't shade that income, they're going to charge a higher rate. So as long as you come into an expat deal thinking, okay, I may not be able to borrow as much, I may not be able to get as big a loan, and I may have to pay a bit more, there's generally going to be options for you.