FAQs

Mortgage broker is the old term used for mortgage advisers and essentially means the same thing. 

Your Mortgage Link adviser is your personal consultant:

- We are in the business of helping people.

- We provide you with professional advice on all the options.

- We assist you to work out how much you can afford to borrow and the best repayment options.

- We will explain the pitfalls, interpret the fine print and fill out the forms for you.

- We work with a wide range of lenders, including major banks.

- We negotiate with the lenders and work to get the right mortgage for your needs.

- We liaise with the other professionals such as your Solicitor and Accountant.

- We remain available to help you with any loan queries you may have in the future.

In short, we do the hard work for you, without the worry. We can save you time and money and there is no extra cost for our service.

Mortgage Link advisers have the knowledge, buying power, negotiating skills, patience and the experience to shop around on your behalf. Whilst we cannot tap that "crystal ball" we can tell you what is forecasted by the experts.

The mortgage adviser industry is now well established in New Zealand, writing approximately 40% of all home loan business and this figure continues to grow annually. Mortgage advisers offer choice, professional advice and expertise. No single lender, no matter how good, can be all things to all people. In addition, they only have their product to offer you so they attempt to make your needs fit their product and tell you this is the best solution for you.

A Mortgage Link adviser approaches your loan from another angle. We work to match your needs to the products of a large range of lenders and we act for you, not the lender.

In addition, the high volumes of loan business we process as a national group gives us more influence to negotiate the best overall package, including fee reductions, interest rate discounts, useful contributions to legal costs, and reduced banking costs.

We remove the stress and save you time and money.

No, we keep all details on your dealings with us in our offices. You can subscribe to email newsletters and we send all clients our regular newsletters. We encourage our clients to let us know of any changing circumstances that you may want some input from us on. We are always here to talk about interest rates and fixed rate rollovers.

We are not aligned to any lender which means we can help you sort out the positives, as well as the negatives, involved with mortgage financing. Issues like establishment costs, banking fees, legal contributions and service all contribute towards a good mortgage lender. We do deal with the non-bank lenders and we are finding that sometimes the mortgage packages they offer are more advantageous to certain clients than trading bank lending packages. We make recommendations to you based on our research, experience and knowledge. However the final decision about who you wish to borrow from will always be yours.

This is another lender differential - some lenders will allow you to make extra payments, or lump sum principal mortgage payments, off your fixed rate loan without penalty and others won't. When we are advising clients on mortgage options this issue is always covered as we believe it is better to have the option to pay extra during your fixed rate term.

More people are presently choosing a split option between floating (variable) rate and fixed interest rate on their house mortgages. However, this does depend on your lender, as some will let you make extra payments off your fixed rate - so why have it split?

The reason for taking a floating rate is primarily to give you the flexibility for increasing your payments. In today's market the floating rates are higher than the fixed rates so we usually calculate how much you can pay and then structure your loan accordingly.

Most lenders allow you to restructure your mortgage on your fixed interest rate maturity so any floating rate / fixed rate adjustments can be made then.

Each lender has vastly different criteria, and quite often, while you may not qualify with one bank, you may easily fit the criteria of another. We are aware of the differing lending criteria and are able to assist you in choosing the most appropriate lender for your individual circumstances.

This will depend on how much you decide to borrow, interest rates, house price inflation and how long the loan is in force. We can estimate this for you.

Although the loan is intended to be lifelong and you are not required to make any payments during the life of the loan, you can choose to repay all or part of the loan at any time. 

Yes, so long as you meet lending criteria at the time - but you must tell us in advance so we can arrange for your new property to be valued.

Usually the loan is repaid from the sale proceeds of your home. The loan become repayable when you move permanently from your home - usually when you pass away, or move into long-term care.

You can apply to borrow more at any time, subject to lending criteria.

You always own your home, and can live there for as long as you choose.

When purchasing a residential property or investment property, there is no extra cost to you the client. The lender that approves your loan pays us for successful applications. If we do need to charge a fee for any reason, you will be advised before we begin any work for you. The lenders pay us for the work we do in preparing loan applications and providing accurate information. The lenders do not charge clients extra for using a mortgage adviser - in fact some lenders give clients of ours better deals than they would get directly. There are no hidden costs.

If you have a question that is not answered here or if you know a question that would be a worthwhile addition to this FAQ please don’t hesitate to write us a line at admin@mortgagelink.co.nz. We appreciate your questions and feedback!