A first home buyer mortgage broker who shows the working

Who this is for

You are buying your first home and the information online contradicts itself by the third tab. You want a real borrowing figure before you fall for a place, not after. You have heard about government schemes and want someone to check which ones apply to your actual purchase rather than in theory.

Or you have already been to one bank, got one answer, and suspect there are better ones.

How the process works

1. We talk. A conversation about income, savings and the kind of home you are hoping for. No documents needed.
2. We check your ceiling and your schemes. A realistic borrowing figure plus eligibility for the federal guarantee and the NSW duty concessions, checked against your actual numbers.
3. We arrange one deliberate pre-approval. From the lender whose policy fits your income and your target property. Offers get made with a real number behind them.
4. We manage it to settlement. Application, valuation, approval and settlement, with us chasing the lender rather than you.

What a broker does that a bank doesn’t

A bank can only offer its own products, and it will only mention the government schemes it participates in. We compare across the panel and check scheme eligibility lender by lender. And we show the reasoning behind the recommendation, instead of asking you to trust the logo.

The service costs you nothing because the lender pays us a commission on settlement, which we disclose in writing, and it does not change the rate you pay.

Government support, decoded

Two schemes matter most here, and they stack. The federal First Home Guarantee, recently expanded as the 5% Deposit Scheme, lets eligible buyers purchase with a minimum five per cent deposit while the government guarantees part of the loan, so lenders mortgage insurance disappears. The expansion also removed the old income caps and place limits entirely (firsthomebuyers.gov.au, retrieved August 2026). Property price caps still apply and vary by location, which is the catch that matters most on the North Shore, because the brokers based in Pymble watch median house sales sit well above every cap, and the schemes push first home buyers toward units instead. Chatswood apartment lending is where a good share of that redirected demand lands.

NSW separately waives transfer duty up to $800,000 and phases it in to $1,000,000 under the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme, and our stamp duty calculator computes your exact position from the current Revenue NSW brackets. The stack is real. A buyer inside both schemes purchases with a small deposit, no insurance premium and little or no duty, which changes what the same savings can buy.

The deposit question, honestly

The traditional answer is a fifth of the price, because at that point no mortgage insurance applies, but the practical answer depends on your market and your timeline. Pretending one number suits everyone is how buyers waste years saving toward a target that keeps moving away from them. Buying earlier with the guarantee, with a family guarantee, or even with priced insurance can beat waiting. Sometimes it cannot.

Our opinion, which the save-a-full-deposit crowd will dispute: for most North Shore first home buyers inside the scheme caps, buying sooner with five per cent beats saving toward twenty, because this market has historically outrun most savings rates. We will still run your numbers both ways, because opinions are not arithmetic. And one caveat against our own interest: if your buffer after settlement would be thinner than a month of expenses, we will tell you to wait, and we have.

Mistakes we keep seeing

Almost every hard first-home lesson we watch fits a short list, and every item on it is avoidable with a fortnight of preparation. The pattern underneath them all is the same: the property came first and the finance came second.

• Falling for a place before knowing the ceiling.
• Leaving unused credit card limits open.
• Chasing the advertised rate over policy fit.
• Skipping pre-approval in an auction market.
• Forgetting duty, legal and moving costs.
• Applying with the wrong lender first.