That Home Loan Hub
Welcome to That Home Loan Hub, your ultimate guide to mastering the world of home loans and property. I'm Zebunisso Alimova, here to simplify the complexities of real estate and provide you with expert insights and the latest trends.
Whether you're a first-time homebuyer, an experienced investor, or simply curious about the property market, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we unlock the secrets to property success and help you make informed decisions. Let's dive into the world of property together!
That Home Loan Hub
Balancing Act: How a Lifestyle Property Sale Changed Everything
What happens when a mortgage advisor faces his own property and financing challenges? In this refreshingly honest conversation, James returns after a brief hiatus to share his journey of selling the lifestyle block he's called home for 20 years.
The decision didn't come lightly. After two decades in the countryside, James found himself spending 20 hours weekly just driving, with endless property maintenance consuming his remaining free time. With growing clarity about his true priorities—building his mortgage advisory business and pursuing his passion for cycling—James recognized something had to change.
The story unfolds as both a personal journey and a masterclass in modern property transitions. Despite being a mortgage professional himself, James encountered the very challenges many of his clients face: securing financing with commission-based income when traditional banks prove reluctant. His solution came through a second-tier lender offering a competitive interest-only loan that actually reduced his monthly payments while he establishes his commission income.
Perhaps most remarkable was James's property preparation strategy. After tackling the daunting task of decluttering a home occupied for two decades (including renting storage for his "hoarder" wife's possessions), the house sold after just one open home—a testament to thoughtful presentation. "It's about making your weak points better, making it as clean and decluttered as possible, and then ensuring your key points are on show," James explains.
Through this experience, James gained invaluable perspective that enhances his ability to guide clients through similar transitions. His journey reminds us that sometimes the greatest wealth comes from reclaiming your time and aligning your living situation with your true priorities. Have you ever considered how your current property fits your evolving life goals?
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Hello James.
Speaker 2:Hello Zyvaniso.
Speaker 1:Welcome back. It's been a while. Where have you been?
Speaker 2:I've been in my what's that word? Mia missing in action.
Speaker 1:Missing in action. So excited to have you back, James. Let us delve into where you've been and what you've been up to.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a bit of background. I joined you guys, you know, a few months ago maybe the beginning of the year, but officially in March and then I realized how much fun this work is and how I sort of want to focus on it. I suppose help people get into mortgages. It's really cool. So, however, I own the lifestyle property you know, and I'm running kids around. You know, me and my wife, Monday to Thursday. We're not getting home till 10pm at night. Same all day, sunday. So, and we've got this lifestyle block, so it's like I don't have.
Speaker 2:you know, sometimes you just got to focus on what you really want to do and it just made me realize the things that I really want to do. So what I have been doing is getting my lifestyle block up to a reasonable standard so I could hold my head up, and you know people will come when we try to sell it. I'm not going to be too embarrassed.
Speaker 1:So hold on a second. You were selling your house.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:To go where, to do what? Not to move in with me.
Speaker 2:Hey, no, well can I because, like I, honestly have nowhere to live now. Um, so yeah, it's so that you know, with a lifestyle block, you, you spend a lot of time on it it's like even if it's only a small lifestyle block. We've been there 20 years and you've got the travel extra travel associated because you're living out in the countryside. So you know I'm killing about 20 hours a week driving. So, by moving into a townhouse and having very little to do outside.
Speaker 2:It just completely opens up my schedule to be able to do the things I want to do, because I also really like cycling. So I want to be able to do my work and I want to be able to go cycling you know, it's pretty simple, so um so priorities change right.
Speaker 1:What I'm hearing from you is that 20 years ago when you bought that, when you bought that block of land and a house, it fitted your family. At that time you got to run around with the kids playing ball and, you know, doing your right-on lawn mowing.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:But over the time as your family has grown and now the kids actually have other opportunities outside of that lifestyle block and I know they're quite professional athletes in their sport.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you drive them around all over the country. At the moment, as they compete, you no longer have time for it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, when I get spare time, I don't want to be working on my property.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I mean? So that's where we've changed.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you were preparing your house for the sale. Did you manage to sell the house?
Speaker 2:It could be going should be going unconditional today or tomorrow Awesome. So it's looking pretty good, so we might have got a bit lucky there.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then you were buying, so you've got somewhere to go. Yes, we bought a place first.
Speaker 2:We've got an offer, a conditional offer. It goes unconditional as soon as our place sells.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So it's just based on but yes, we have a place, that we've got a really nice house, that we've put a really good offer or a fair offer on.
Speaker 1:So how did you manage to do that? Hold on, let's stop for a second. So you haven't sold your house yet, and then you bought a house at the same time. So do we want? To dig a little bit there for our listeners that are in a similar position as you, that are sort of wanting to buy something but don't want to risk losing their house altogether.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So it's all been a bit of a whirlwind, so I'll try and put it in context. Yeah, I think we put an offer on the house before we actually Even listed your house. Certainly before we listed my house. So we put a conditional offer on the property before we even looked at finance. Wow, I'm pretty sure we did it that way. It's not something we'd usually recommend, is it?
Speaker 1:Yes, please don't do that.
Speaker 2:If you're listening to this.
Speaker 1:Don't do what James has done, Because looking at James today, he's got a little bit extra gray hairs, Less hair. I don't have any hair anymore. You said it not me.
Speaker 2:So I think I did I can't remember exactly the way around. I did it because it was all sort of at the same time wanted, um, it was sort of within our range. And then I did the. I said we submitted through you for a second tier lender and for a main bank. Because if you think of my situation both what my wife and I are on commission, recently gone to commission-based roles- so no full-time, proper income as we like yep, so the big banks weren.
Speaker 2:banks weren't that excited about it, about lending to me, because you know I can't prove that steady income but we had a really good equity in our existing property.
Speaker 1:I thought you were going to say you had a very good mortgage advisor.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sure they had something to do with it.
Speaker 1:And that too, yes, I did. You had good equity income on commission that we had to prove the future income and a very good mortgage advisor that knew where to take you to fight that battle Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we had lots of options. We didn't know if the banks would go for us, so we had that second tier lender option which was Avante, and you know they got back to us really quickly. They were really good to deal with.
Speaker 1:I think within a couple of days really, we had an answer for you.
Speaker 2:It was really fast.
Speaker 1:And we managed to get you a really good rate as well because, contrary to popular belief, a lot of people think that second tier lenders charge an arm and a leg and I mean in your case, you know, the interest rate wasn't too bad that was really good.
Speaker 2:I was really happy with the, because I was expecting much higher and um we got labeled as in the what they call a near prime lender and I was like oh, yeah, so I'm not too far off. So within a year, you know I'm I'm doing an interest-only loan for a year, basically. So within a year we should have our commissions up and running properly.
Speaker 2:No pressure, James, I'd like to think so you know, in fact in a couple of months we'll be sorted. It's just to help us get through that little tricky patch and then later on maybe we could go to a big bank or whatever.
Speaker 1:but we'll see how it pans out. And, as you say, you know, moving away from the lifestyle block gives you back the hours in the day to spend on the work, on building your business, on getting ahead. So I think what you're trying to achieve here is that.
Speaker 2:Yes, you have to pay a little bit extra now, but then, yeah, it will get better. It actually works out quite well because the interest only loan is less than what we're paying on our existing mortgage.
Speaker 1:Wow, so I mean, I didn't plan it that way yeah I just went for the interest only because I thought let's just take a bit of stress out of the situation which makes a lot of sense for a lot of people in that position is that because once you sell your property you know you will down pay this mortgage and then interest only for a year, it's not going to really affect your equity too much.
Speaker 2:And we can catch up. I'm really confident. I've been able to catch up, so it's worked out quite well. It's very stressful, so I understand how the client feels. You know what I mean Submitting all the information you know, the fact find and putting all your numbers in finding all your documents that you've, you know, so really feel for people that are going through that same thing. You know, but also the added stress of wanting to sell their house also, and you know, looking for.
Speaker 1:So you really walked the walk and the path and you can really relate now to clients in you know, in their journey, and that's incredible experience to have behind your belt, I reckon.
Speaker 2:Oh, it certainly is, and I've been very lucky because I only had to do one open home Just one One open home Wow. So you know people have to do this. You know the people that we are buying from. They've had it on the market since january, february so open home even though we are almost very close to unconditional off uh offer now, um, we're still doing open homes. You know, they're still doing open homes even though they've had this offer for the last month or so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, so I feel for them I remember, you know I'll take you back to a journey of mine. I when I was pregnant with my third child and we've just finished building our house and we needed to sell our house to move into a different location. I thought at that time and I was heavily pregnant with child number three and every weekend I'm like scrubbing the showers and bathrooms and bedrooms and everything, and I think my eldest was around four at that time and my second was about two years old, so I had a four year old, two year old and heavily pregnant, trying to prepare the house for open homes and, honestly, this is something I do not recommend and, um, it was very stressful well, we, we've been in this place for 20 years, so we and my wife is a bit of a hoarder.
Speaker 1:Oof. I hope she's not listening to this.
Speaker 2:She knows it. I call her every day so it's quite funny. So we, you know we've got like a whole. You know you can get these storage units. They actually bring them to your place. It's like half a container.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we took, we basically filled up one of those with just the stuff in our house to declutter, wow, um.
Speaker 1:So you know it's been a good tip right to declutter the house make it presentable and maybe that was the success to your story of selling the house within one open open home viewing because it really wasn't a.
Speaker 2:You know, it's it's very property. Once we did that, it actually opened up the place a lot nicer.
Speaker 2:And we had all the native boundary done. I mean, I tidied that all up and we had it looking really good, but just the house was. It's a bit of an older house, it's a smaller house, but we had some like a games room and a flat. That was a bit of a selling point. So I guess it's all about just making your weak points better, making it as tidy and as clean and as decluttered as possible, and then making sure your key points are on show. So for us it was the big backyard and native boundary and the games room and the flat self-contained flat.
Speaker 1:Nice. So I guess, like with any business right, you review your business activity. Where are your strengths?
Speaker 2:Where are your?
Speaker 1:weaknesses, what can you improve on, and what's the game plan from there? I love it Absolutely love it Well. Thank you, james, for coming on today. Finally we see you and we really missed you, and it's good to hear your story firsthand and share that experience. So I'm now confident in your skills and helping other clients to get ahead in life.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's already helping me. It's already helping me because you know I can just talk to the clients about you know, with enthusiasm and empathy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and give them some pointers. Absolutely Awesome. Well, thank you so much and hope to hear from you soon, cool.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Zeb and Issa.
Speaker 1:See you.
