Get your finances approved

A VERY real challenge that our local market is currently experiencing is issues with buyers’ finance. While we are very fortunate in Australia to have a strong and secure banking system, this does have some conditions attached. Buyers now require a strong deposit and must prove a relatively high level of saving history in order to successfully purchase property. Without these conditions being satisfied, the banks are very hesitant to approve some home loans. When it comes to putting a property “under contract”, sellers are treading more cautiously with finance clauses as this effectively removes their property from the active market for weeks. To alleviate this issue and put themselves in a strong negotiating position, buyers should at least have a line of “conditional approval” in place with a lender or through a finance broker and be able to provide the appropriate documentation. They should no longer be surprised if a seller wishes to continue to market their property until finance has been unconditionally approved in order to find a suitably qualified buyer. Sellers on the other hand, should regard an offer that is not conditional on finance, as a particularly strong offer and may need to negotiate the selling price of their property a little less vigorously in order to secure that buyer. Chris Marsh principal, Marsh Property