Speaker 1: 0:10

Hello and welcome back. Today we are going to dive into the topic of self-employment and can you buy a house if you're on ACC and I'm joined by my resident lender? Hello, James.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Bonjour.

Speaker 1: 0:24

Bonjour, okay.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Am I saying that right?

Speaker 1: 0:26

Yep, he's the guy that always comes up with different greetings, but they're all sent to be.

Speaker 2: 0:31

The same, the same. It's just the ones I can pronounce.

Speaker 1: 0:35

I love it. I love it, Thank you.

Speaker 2: 0:44

James. So, james, tell me about your client. All right, so I've got a number of really interesting clients. It just goes to show you that there's no sort of middle ground. There might be a few that are in the middle ground type area, but usually they're a little bit all over the shop. So I've got this cool client.

Speaker 2: 0:58

He's had an accident earlier in his life and so he gets a permanent income from ACC, which is not too bad. But he also is able to drive. He drives as an Uber driver, so he's got a bit of income. He's a self-employed person, which he's been doing for seven or eight years, but he's also been receiving ACC, you know, for at least that period of time. So he's got these two main areas of income. He's a single guy. He's really looking to get a home for, just for himself. He's a bit older, you know middle, I would say middle age, because he's around the same age as me, so pretty young really, and possibly quite handsome. But you know, so he is.

Speaker 2: 1:51

We are going to the banks with him. We've had a little bit of trouble with the banks. The banks don't like. The main problem is not with his ACC income, that's fine, it's permanent and it's ongoing and it's consistent. The main issue is around his self-employed income, the amount of money he makes from Uber driving, and that's just because he probably has been doing it sort of as more of a part-time type thing, so it hasn't been really run as a business properly over the period of time. So we think we're getting there, we're making progress, but the main banks have said you, you know he needs to come back with a consistent two-year period of and how long has he been doing it?

Speaker 2: 2:41

he's been actually doing it for about seven years, but unfortunately not in the last year. He had a year off due to an injury, so he's got that gap. Um, yeah, and usually they would go. That would be okay, I think, because they would go back to the previous two years and see what he had earned. But it's just that he wasn't quite earning enough from that business to really make it an option for the banks to consider. It's just a bit risky for them.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Okay, so if I'm hearing this right, if someone is on ACC today, they can get a mortgage. Yeah, the bank will not have a problem with that. It depends on what sort of ACC it is, how long it's for and all the other factors. But if you are self-employed, ideally we want to see at least 12 to 24 months stable income, and especially with Uber driving, I guess it's something unpredictable.

Speaker 2: 3:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Some seasons could be more, some seasons could be less.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Especially with COVID during that period he had a really good period and then it was just obviously you know nothing for a little while. But yeah, no, he, it's funny because the banks are coming back and saying ACC income is fine, you know, as long as we can show that it's permanent, but the self-employed income is not so good, okay.

Speaker 1: 4:10

But we are getting there somewhere. Oh, we are.

Speaker 2: 4:13

Yeah, we're going now. We're looking at non-bank lenders Just in the meantime. Why we try and get is, you know, we're working on two things. We're trying working with him to improve his financial situation, try and get his business turning over a bit more money and showing a bit better, you know, profit. And then, but in the background, we're also working the non-bank lenders because they might just have a little bit more appetite for his type of lending.

Speaker 2: 4:38

So there's definitely options for him yeah, so hopefully next time we talk I'll have a good update on that sounds awesome.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Thank you, james. This is um really important and for those that have missed the webinar, we've done a webinar with paulina a couple of um weeks ago. It was for the first home buyers. Go and watch that. We've got it available on YouTube and we actually have a couple of more webinars coming up in the next wee while and one of them will be around insurances. We've covered with Rebecca. If you own ACC and if you actually have another insurance, like a mortgage protection or rent protection, it will top up your ACC as well, so that could also be considered part of the income too.

Speaker 2: 5:22

I just wanted to also say with the ACC, it's quite important that you can show that it's permanent. That's the really key part of it.

Speaker 1: 5:25

Yeah, and I've just had a client as well. She's a single mom and she's got four dependents and she's also got an ACC portion of her income and we managed to secure her mortgage, which was absolutely fantastic. She didn't think it would be possible because she's not working. She's fully on ACC and the benefit and she managed to buy out her ex, who was a permanent. You know he was in permanent employment and really good salary and he couldn't get a mortgage.

Speaker 1: 5:51

Wow, so we absolutely it was a massive win for her. You know, she felt so empowered that she could do that where he's got a job and he couldn't. It was absolutely mind-blowing how the things work.

Speaker 2: 6:05

Must be the mortgage broker, eh, exactly.

Speaker 1: 6:08

I said to her, he just didn't have me on his team, you know, but we didn't want that because we wanted her to get the house.

Speaker 2: 6:14

Exactly. That was good. That's awesome, good outcome.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Good.