First home, refix, refinance, investment property, construction, self-employed. We handle the negotiation with six banks at once, structure the split between fixed and floating, and stay in the relationship every 12 months for the next 30 years.
Your bank is not your friend on this. They negotiate against you, not for you. A mortgage broker negotiates against six banks at the same time, on your behalf, for free (the bank pays the broker on settlement). Even small structure changes save five-figure sums over a 30-year mortgage. The whole exercise costs you a 30-minute conversation.
If you already have a mortgage, there are three questions worth asking before we touch anything else. When does your current fix end? What's your real repayment goal: pay it off faster, free up cash, or just hold steady? And: are you with the right bank?
Most refixes happen with the same bank you've always had, because the email arrives, the rate looks fine, and there isn't time. The cost of "the rate looks fine" over a 5-year fix is usually $5,000 to $15,000 of leakage that nobody notices because it's invisible.
Book a refix conversation →Refix = same bank, new rate. Refinance = different bank, often with cashback. We model both.
What to put on fixed (and for how long), what to keep floating, what to offset. Three levers, big differences.
Round-up, lump sum, payment frequency. Most households can shave 5 to 8 years off the mortgage with the right structure.
When the cashback covers the break cost and the rate is genuinely better, the move is mathematically obvious.
First-home buyers have a different problem to refinancers. The product is the same (a mortgage) but the journey starts much earlier: KiwiSaver withdrawal, deposit shaping, the First Home Loan scheme, builders' contracts, conditional offers. Every one of those steps is a place where the bank's defaults aren't your defaults.
We do a fair number of first-home conversations that look impossible at the start. "Three other brokers told us no" is something we hear about once a month. Sometimes the answer really is no. More often the answer is "let me look at it for a week" and then yes from a different lender.
Book a first-home conversation →The mistake we see most often is not the amount, it's the timing of when you tell the bank.
The Kāinga Ora First Home Loan scheme lets you buy with 5% deposit at the same rate. We map the eligibility.
What conditions to put in, what conditions never to drop, how to compete with cash buyers without exposing yourself.
Different lenders, different draw-down rules, different valuation gymnastics. We have a checklist for it.
KiwiSaver withdrawal, deposit, Kāinga Ora First Home Loan eligibility, conditional offers, builder vs existing.
See the first-home walkthrough RefinanceCashback math, break cost modelling, new-lender servicing test, application timing. We do this 4 times a month.
See the refinance walkthrough InvestmentTop-up vs new structure, interest deductibility under the current rules, stress-test, equity release.
See the investment walkthrough Self-employedTwo years of financials, what banks actually look at, why ASB and Westpac differ, the trust structure question.
See the self-employed walkthroughNot advice, not precise, not a quote. A back-of-envelope to see whether the conversation is worth having.
Maths: balance × (current rate − new rate) × term ÷ 100. This ignores compounding, repayment structure and break costs. Real modelling factors all of these and uses lender-specific servicing tests.
Illustrative examples only. Final case studies to be drawn from Craig's real client files with each client's written permission before publish.
First-home buyers in Papamoa, both self-employed contractors, deposit half KiwiSaver half savings. Three other brokers said no for servicing reasons. Craig took a week to model the picture with two years of contract income presented properly, plus household expenses normalised. Different lender said yes at 90% LVR.
Couple in Tauranga refixing $720k. Their bank offered 6.39%. We negotiated 5.89% at the same bank, then 5.69% with $4,800 cashback at a different bank. They moved. Total cost difference over 2 years: $14,400 of interest saved plus the cashback.
Mount Maunganui couple, original home up $340k from purchase, wanted to buy a rental. We structured a 20% equity release as a separate loan with its own purpose, kept the deductibility clean for the rental side, and avoided cross-collateralisation. Rental purchased 90 days later.
Your bank will negotiate against your interests. A broker negotiates against six banks at once on your behalf, for free. There are very few scenarios where the bank-only path produces a better outcome than the broker-led path.
Nothing to you. Brokers are paid by the lender on settlement. Wealth Health discloses every commission upfront in the disclosure document and rebates a portion back to clients on settlements over a certain size.
It depends on your fix expiry, your tolerance for repayment change, and what the RBNZ Official Cash Rate is doing. We publish a fresh take inside two hours of every OCR decision under the Insights section.
As a rough rule, 4 to 5 times your gross household income, less your existing debt commitments and adjusted for living costs. The real number depends on the lender's specific servicing test rate, which changes monthly. We can give you a real, lender-specific answer in 15 minutes.
Almost always yes. Banks compete for new business with cashback offers, often $3,000 to $5,000 per $100,000 of lending. We model whether the cashback covers the break costs and whether the rate at the new bank is genuinely better, not just headline-better.
Then we work harder. Self-employed, contract income, recent bankruptcy, recent credit defaults, casual work history: all of these are workable with the right lender and the right presentation. Three banks will reflexively say no. The fourth might say yes. That's the whole game.
15 minutes, no pitch. He'll either find something worth fixing or tell you you're already on the best rate available.