Mortgage reviews for Wellington homeowners
Your mortgage shouldn’t disappear into the background for 30 years
Buying the house is one milestone
What you do with the mortgage afterwards can have just as much impact on your long-term financial position.
We want Lambton to be the adviser you call throughout home ownership – not someone you speak to once when you need the bank to say yes.
That means checking in as life changes, making sure your lending is still structured appropriately and helping you keep sight of where you’re ultimately heading.
We recommend reviewing your mortgage every year
It doesn’t have to be a big production. We look at what’s changed, whether the current structure still makes sense and whether you’re on track towards your longer-term goals.
It’s particularly worth talking to us if you’re:
coming off a fixed rate
changing jobs
receiving a pay rise
moving to a lower income
having children
renovating
separating
buying another property
carrying personal debt
or simply wondering whether you’re doing this mortgage thing properly
Life changes. Your mortgage can change with it
Banks are very good at setting up loans. They’re less good at ringing every year and asking how life is going.
Your ideal mortgage at 30 may not be your ideal mortgage at 40.
A household with two incomes and no children has different cashflow from one paying for daycare.
Someone in their peak earning years may have considerably more capacity to repay debt than they did when they first bought.
We want the structure to move with you.
A mortgage review isn't just about rates
We’ll look at:
remaining loan terms
fixed-rate expiry dates
loan splits
floating, offset or revolving facilities
available savings
repayment amounts
personal debts
future property plans
your KiwiSaver contributions and goals
how all of this fits together
The aim is not to endlessly move your mortgage around. It’s to make deliberate decisions rather than default ones.
Cashflow improved by $280 a fortnight
One household we worked with had owned their Wainuiomata home for nine years and had topped up the mortgage several times for maintenance and improvements. They also had a $15,000 vehicle loan and Afterpay debt.
By consolidating the lending, their immediate cashflow improved by around $280 a fortnight.
We kept the consolidated lending on an 18-year term, putting them on track to have the mortgage repaid by age 70 rather than solving the short-term cashflow issue by stretching everything back out over 30 years.
That’s what we mean by looking at the bigger picture.
KiwiSaver fits into it too
Your home loan and KiwiSaver can represent two of the biggest long-term financial decisions your household makes. So it makes sense to review them together.
After your first home, the purpose of KiwiSaver generally shifts towards retirement. That changes the timeframe, which may change the appropriate fund, contribution rate and strategy.
We can review both at the same annual meeting.
We want to be in your corner for the long term
Not every review needs to result in changing something. Sometimes the best advice is that you’re doing exactly what you should be doing.
That’s useful to know too.