Frequently Asked Questions

We review every application on the day it arrives, and most scenarios have a response within a couple of hours. Complex files take longer. Part-complete construction sites and deals with several security properties need more work before we can give you an answer worth relying on, and we would rather take the extra half day than issue terms we have to withdraw.

Loans can be assessed and settled within 24 hours. Two things slow a short-term deal down and neither is inside your control: valuers and first mortgagees. Ask any lender what their process is for each. Many lenders say 24 hours. If their terms are conditional on an external valuation being completed, it is virtually impossible. We have an in-house property team who complete our valuations before a formal offer goes out, so the term sheet you receive is not contingent on a valuer being available that week.

Four things: what the loan is for, the security property, the borrowing entity, and how the loan gets repaid. You do not need to have it packaged. Send the address, the approximate value, what is owing against it and the amount you need, and we can tell you the same day whether it is a deal. Our team handles the rest through to settlement with your solicitor.

• →Send us a scenario

You deal with a senior lending specialist, and the credit authority sits with us. There is no external credit committee and no funder to refer the file to, which is why a decision takes hours rather than weeks. If the answer is no, you get the reason on the call rather than a form letter a fortnight later.

We settle every loan from our own balance sheet. Most private lenders do not. They borrow through a warehouse facility provided by a bank and on-lend it, so the capital behind your loan sits in a line that bank can reduce, reprice or decline to renew. A lender in that position can stop settling without having written a single bad loan, and the borrower who was told last week that the file was progressing hears nothing this week. It is a fair question to put to any lender you are considering. Both models are legitimate, and only one of them means the lender controls whether your loan settles.

From $250,000 to $10,000,000. Where you land inside that range depends on the value of the security, the equity above any existing mortgage, and the exit. The ceiling that binds most deals is not the maximum loan size, it is 70% of assessed value.

Rates start from 9.7% p.a. on a first mortgage and from 11.95% p.a. on a second. Every facility is interest only. Three things move the number: the LVR, the term, and how much work the deal takes to assess. A 55% LVR first mortgage over a completed commercial building on a three month term prices differently from a second mortgage at 68% behind a bank, over a development site, on a twelve month term. We quote the rate with the indicative terms on the same day, rather than after a valuation comes back.

Our application fee is $2,000, and it is only payable when you execute the letter of offer. Be careful with this one across the market. Some lenders pursue borrowers for significant costs even where the deal does not proceed, and those fees can be payable even when it is the lender who withdraws, often because an external valuation did not stack up. Read the indicative offer properly, and do not sign a term sheet until you know which costs become payable and when. Where possible, insist on paying for the valuation only. Once our fee is received we transfer funds to our trust account, instruct our solicitors to prepare the legal documents, arrange the on-site attendance, and do everything else needed to settle the next day.

Legal documentation, the valuation, and the registration or lodgement costs on the security. Ask for those in writing before you sign anything, from us or from anyone else. A rate quoted without the cost of getting the loan in place is not a comparable number, and on a three month facility the establishment costs can matter more to the total than half a per cent on the rate.

In most cases there is no penalty for repaying early. Loans are interest only with the capital repaid on exit, and terms run from 1 to 24 months. If your sale settles in month four of a six month facility, that is the loan working as intended. Early repayment conditions are set out in the letter of offer, so confirm them with us at the time rather than assuming.

Yes. Every loan is secured by a registered first or second mortgage over real property, or by a caveat lodged on the title. We may also take a General Security Interest over the borrowing entity alongside that mortgage. We do not write unsecured loans. If there is no real property in the picture, we are not the lender for the deal, and we will tell you that on the first call.

It is 70% of assessed value. One ceiling, across every product and every property type. On a second mortgage that 70% is the combined position, so the existing first mortgage and our second are added together. A property assessed at $2,000,000 with $1,100,000 owing to the bank has $300,000 of room, not $1,400,000. The total of the payout, the cash out and the costs has to sit inside that figure.

Residential investment, commercial, industrial, mixed use, vacant land and development sites. Raw land and development sites are assessed more conservatively than a completed building, because the resale market for them is thinner and takes longer to clear. The property does not have to be in a capital city, though security in a location with a thin market is valued accordingly.

Real property, and nothing else. We do not lend against plant, machinery, tooling, vehicles, stock, invoices or receivables. Those are frequently what the money is for, which is a different question from what secures it. A manufacturer borrowing $600,000 for a machine gives us a mortgage over property, and the machine is what the money buys. We also do not lend against a business as a going concern. A freehold pub valued on a going concern basis is a normal thing to lend against, because the security there is still the freehold property.

No, and it often is not. A director’s home or an investment property is accepted, and so is property held in a company or a family trust where the title and the authority to mortgage it are in order. The business can be a tenant in a building it does not own and still borrow against a property elsewhere in the group. What we need is real property with equity in it, and the right to take security over that property.

Not on an asset-backed file. We do not run a bank serviceability model. The test is the equity in the security inside 70% LVR, and a documented exit. Trading history helps us understand the business and we will ask about it, but two years of accounts that would not pass a bank are not the reason a deal gets declined here. What we do need is evidence of what repays us, and that has to be a document rather than an intention.

Not materially. We lend to sole traders, companies, trusts and SMSFs where the title and the structure are in order. What we check is that the entity on the title has the power to grant the mortgage, that the trust deed permits it, and that the people signing have the authority to sign. Where a deed is silent or a corporate trustee has been dormant, that is usually fixable, and it is far better found in week one than in settlement week. We take existing structures as we find them. If you are asking whether a different structure would get a better answer, that is a question for your accountant rather than for us.

No. Listed defaults, mortgage and trade arrears, court judgments, ATO debt and a discharged bankruptcy all appear on files we approve. There is no minimum credit score, because the score is not the test. The equity in the property and the exit are. A tax debt is frequently the reason for the loan rather than an obstacle to it. Tell us about it up front. Nothing on a credit file surprises us. Finding it at the searches stage after you did not mention it is a different problem.

• →Bad credit business loans

Four things: • An undischarged bankruptcy in the borrowing entity • No real property to take security over • A consumer or owner-occupied purpose, which we cannot lend for at all • A position that cannot be brought inside 70% of assessed value Everything else is a conversation. If your deal fails one of these, we will say so on the first call rather than take an application fee and work out later that it does not fit.

No. All lending is for business or investment purposes, under the business purpose exemption in the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009. We do not provide consumer credit and we do not write owner-occupied home loans. A director’s home can be the security property for a business loan, which is a different thing from the loan itself being a home loan. If the purpose is personal, we cannot help, and a licensed credit provider is who you need.

Because a mainstream lender cannot meet the deadline, the purpose, or the current trading position. The most frequent uses are: • Cash flow difficulties and timing • Business growth and opportunities • Urgent settlements • Partly completed developments • Outstanding tax payments • Working capital Short-term finance is a bridge to a defined event, not a substitute for a term facility. If you do not know what repays it, the answer is usually that you need a different product.

Yes. A caveat is lodged on the property title to record our interest without registering a mortgage, which leaves your existing first mortgage undisturbed and is what makes settlement in 24 to 48 hours possible. Caveat loans run from 1 to 6 months and suit an urgent, dated problem with a clear repayment event: an ATO deadline, a settlement shortfall, a supplier or payroll obligation.

• →Caveat loans

Speed and registration. A caveat records our interest on the title without registering a mortgage, so it can be in place inside 24 to 48 hours and generally does not require the first mortgagee to consent. It suits a short, dated problem, typically 1 to 6 months. A second mortgage is registered behind the existing first. It takes longer to put in place because the first mortgagee has to consent, and it suits a longer term, up to 24 months, usually for a larger amount. Both sit inside the same 70% combined LVR ceiling. If your exit is eight weeks away, a caveat is normally the right instrument. If it is nine months away, a second mortgage usually is.

• →Caveat loans
• →Second mortgage finance

Yes. That is what a second mortgage does. Your bank facility stays exactly where it is, and we take a registered second position behind it. The constraint is that your existing first mortgagee does need to consent to the second, and the combined first plus second position has to sit inside 70% of assessed value. Consent is routine with most lenders and slow with a few, so it is worth starting that request early. Where the timeline will not accommodate it, a caveat is often the alternative.

• →Second mortgage finance

Yes. Loans in arrears, facilities the current lender will not renew, balloon repayments falling due, and non-bank debt that has become unsustainable are all things we refinance. A lender declining to renew is frequently nothing to do with your file. Lenders funded by a bank warehouse line stop writing loans when that line tightens, and the borrower finds out at expiry. The test is the same as any other deal: the payout figure plus costs inside 70% of assessed value, and a documented exit. Come to us while there is still term left on the facility rather than after it has expired, because the options narrow considerably at that point.

• →Refinance business loans

Interest only during the term, with the capital repaid in one amount on exit. The exit is normally one of four things: a property sale, a refinance to a bank or another lender, a settlement or transaction completing, or a progress or contract payment landing. Terms run from 1 to 24 months, and most loans sit between 3 and 6 months, set to the timing of that event.

One that is documented and dated. A signed contract of sale with a settlement date. A conditional approval from an incoming lender. A contract with payment terms you can show us. Those are exits. "We will sell it" and "the bank should refinance us by then" are intentions. They are not disqualifying, but they need work before we can lend against them, and doing that work in week one beats discovering the gap in the final fortnight of the term. This is the part of an application we spend the most time on, and it is the most common reason a deal that looks fine on equity does not proceed.

Call us, and do it now rather than at expiry. The number is 1300 795 175. Options exist while a facility still has term left on it: an extension, a partial repayment, a restructure, or simply time to let a sale complete. Most of them narrow sharply once the loan is past its expiry date, and all of them get more expensive to resolve. The worst thing you can do on a file like this is go quiet, because it turns a timing problem into an enforcement one.

Extensions are considered case by case rather than granted automatically, and they are priced at the time, based on the remaining term and the position of the security. The thing that does not move is the 70% ceiling. Interest accrued during the original term counts toward it, so a facility that started at 62% has less room at the end than at the beginning, and an extension has to fit inside what is left. Ask in week three of a slipping exit rather than on the day the facility expires. It is the same request and a materially different conversation.

The security for the loan is the mortgage or the caveat over real property. On some files we also take a General Security Interest over the borrowing entity alongside it. That is an additional interest, not the thing we lend against. We do not value a business, we do not lend against goodwill, a licence, a fee book or a customer list, and we do not price a deal on the strength of the trading entity. The property is what supports the loan.