 Hello again to those of you that joined us yesterday when we chatted about pre-qualifications. For those of you that are joining us for the first time, welcome. My name is Natasha Champion and I'm a regional sales manager at Uber Home Loans. We work with both real estate agents and buyers to make sure that buyers are pre-qualified before they're put in an offer to purchase. And today we're going to discuss more about the home loan approval process once that offer has been accepted. I'm joined again today by Willem Camolo, an area specialist for the Pam Golding Property Group based in Danefirm. We're going to cover the ins and outs of getting the best deal on your home loan and why it's never a good idea to limit yourself to one bank. We had some excellent feedback from yesterday's session and a great Q&A. Hopefully we can add the same value today chatting about how to make sure you get the best deal on your home loan. Natasha, I can't tell you how many times people just accept the first home loan offer that they're given without considering whether it's the best deal for them. Now I do understand that that's the biggest obstacle as a buyer when it comes to securing a property is the actual home loan itself, so people are very quick to sign on the dotted line. It can be a costly mistake not to shop around for the best deal. Absolutely. So I think the power lies in the comparison. Being comparative quotes and not settling for one offer, especially when you're dealing with the biggest financial commitment you're ever going to make. Without having options and without having more than one quote, you also don't have any bargaining power to go back and forth and fight for that best deal. What I'm often asked by my buyers when I suggest that they look at multiple quotes is what difference does it make if they save say 0.25%? Why should they withhold on acceptance for such a small percentage? So it's interesting and I think one needs to remember that you're embarking upon a 20 year loan and the interest over 20 years can be quite substantial, specifically in the case of a higher loan amount. So the higher the loan amount, the bigger the interest is and I've worked on deals over the years where that quarter of a percentage could save hundreds of thousands. That is a great saving. So 0.25% isn't actually a small number after all in the long term. So another thing that does come up is I know a lot of my clients have say private bankers or long standing relationships with their bank, doesn't it make more sense for them to just go directly to their bank? Wouldn't they naturally give them the best rates? So not necessarily. You know, while it's a noble idea, a lot of people think their own bank will automatically take the best care of them. But it's so important to remember that a bank is a business and they are subject to various credit policies at any given time and these change all the time. A stat that I always like to share is that 43% of our applications are actually banked with an institution that is not the client's primary bank. Because that's where the client got the best deal at the time. I myself have got my home loan just from a personal perspective, not from my private banker, not from my primary bank. And I think it's quite naive to assume that you are getting the best deal from your bank without any benchmark, without any level of comparison. It never ceases to amaze me that people will use an insurance comparison service to save a couple of hundred bucks a month. And when you want to buy a vehicle or even a big screen TV, you'll do a fair amount of shopping around. And this is your biggest financial commitment you're probably going to make. Don't make the mistake of accepting the first quote you receive, or indeed the only quote. Yeah, you're right. So what happens in an instance where someone has already been pre-qualified by their bank, surely that's pretty much a done deal? So for those that joined us yesterday, you'll remember that the bank pre-qualification is not always linked to a credit report, and it also is not always linked to verification of declarations. It's based on what the client declares in terms of income and expenses. So it's not necessarily verified. Our pre-qualification has got a 90% chance of approval because depending on the exercise, the way we pre-qualify you, we verify declarations and we do a comprehensive credit report. So we're actually ticking all the boxes that the bank's credit department is going to check once they analyze the deal, as opposed to working only on the client's declarations. OK, so how does that work? Does the client approach their own bank and then you guys apply to all the others? So our service works best, our value proposition, as a home loan comparison service works best when we retain control of all the applications. We deal directly with the home loans departments in the banks. That's where the decisions get made. And we are in a position to negotiate based on competing offers to get to a point where the terms and conditions and the interest rates meet favorably in the client's best interest. So is that it? One application, multiple banks and you get the best deal? Pretty much. So our application form will cover all the bank's requirements. So combined with the supporting documentation, we'll be able to go directly to the home loans departments at each and every single back. Once we start getting quotes back, we start comparing the authors and then negotiate back and forth. We do provide feedback to the buyer so he knows exactly where we are and the multiple bank submission is also going to increase the client's chances not only of a better deal but of an approval in the first place because all the banks have got different credit criteria requirements. So we've discussed the application process and the outcome itself. What's next? I have many first-time buyers and it is quite a scary process for them. Yes, so at that point, once the buyer's bond has been approved and once we've accepted that bond, the bond attorney will get instructed. So the bond attorney represents the bank and we'll make sure that that bond is registered in the client's name. That process can take anywhere up to from six weeks to three months depending on a couple of variables, rates, clearance, this and that and then the property is registered in the buyer's name and the repayments begin from there. As with everything, knowledge is key. So cozy up, get close to your home loans consultant as soon as you decide to buy. We make sure you're pre-qualified. We'll make sure that you're aware of all the costs associated with the transaction and we're here to see you through right until registration. From the tiny seed of becoming a home owner all the way to a proud home owner, knowing the entire process and having gotten the best deal. Awesome Natasha, all of that really does empower the buyer to making the right decisions on their journey to securing a home especially using a home loan comparison service like Uber. Should we open the floor up to questions for anything that maybe we haven't covered yet? Yes, let's do that. We'd love to hear from you, our visitors.