First home buyer

A pre-approval is an estimated amount of how much a bank could lend you. The lender will consider your income, assets, liabilities, and living expenses. Once they’ve checked out your financials, they may give you a pre-approval for how much they could lend you. Add this amount to your deposit to see what you could spend on a property. Factor in other costs as well, such as conveyancing and stamp duty.

Stamp duty is a government tax due when ownership of a property changes. The amount payable depends on various factors, including what state the property is in, whether it’s an investment or an owner-occupied property, and if the purchaser is a first-home buyer.

If you’re a first-home buyer and intend to live in the property, you might be eligible for a concession or waiver of stamp duty. Check what’s available in your state or territory.

The maximum loan amount is an estimate and is indicative only, based on the income and expenses you have entered.

It doesn’t take into account loan eligibility criteria or your complete financial position. Borrowing power calculation does not constitute a loan offer.

We have also made a number of assumptions when estimating your borrowing power and those assumptions affect how reliable this estimate is. These assumptions include:

Your income

• We use a monthly income amount in our calculations. Any amounts which are not entered as a monthly figure are converted into a monthly amount on the assumption that there are exactly 52 weeks, or 26 fortnights, in a year. This may slightly overstate or understate your income.
• We use a net income amount in our calculations. To convert a before tax (gross) amount into an approximate after tax (net) amount, we use the tax tables provided by the Australian Tax Office. These may not take into account all additional levies (such as the Medicare levy), or any deductions or tax strategies you may have.
• We may not take all of your income into account when calculating your borrowing power. This may occur, for example, with income like bonuses or overtime which may not be consistently earned.

Your expenses

• Understating your expenses will generally result in your borrowing power amount being overstated. You should therefore be as accurate as possible with the expense amounts you use in the calculator. Your expenses used within the calculator will be either the greater of your entered expenses or the Household Expenditure Measure (HEM). The HEM is an average amount of money spent annually by households of a particular size and composition.

Interest rates

• We have applied the current interest rate for a ubank home loan which varies depending on which product you have selected i.e. ‘Neat Home Loan (variable)’, ‘Flex Home Loan (variable)’, or in the case of ‘Flex Home Loan (fixed)’ whether you have selected the 1, 2, 3 or 5 year fixed term.
• As rates are subject to change, the rate that is current today (both variable or fixed) may not be the rate that applies to your loan.
• We include interest rate buffers in our calculations. This allows us to factor in, to a degree, the effect of interest rate increases when working out how much you may be able to afford.

Repayments

Repayments are indicative only. When calculating repayments we have had to make a number of assumptions which may affect the accuracy of the amounts shown. They include:

• That you will make principal and interest repayments over the loan term you have entered.
• That the interest rate displayed will not change and will apply for the full loan term entered. We do this as we can’t predict what rates will do in the future. You should, however, remember that variable rates can change at any time, that any fixed rate shown is today’s rate and may not be the fixed rate that applies to your loan and that fixed rates only apply for a limited period (after which a variable rate applies).
• That repayments are made monthly (even though you may choose to make repayments more frequently)
• That your annual interest charge is divided equally over 12 monthly payments. In reality, interest is typically calculated daily and charged at the same frequency and on the same day as repayments are made.
• That interest is charged to the loan account at the same frequency and on the same day as the repayments are made (this may not be the case for your loan).
• We have rounded some amounts to the nearest dollar when calculating your indicative repayments.

Fees and charges

• We have not taken into account any fees or charges.