Hello JohnHenry
I am a little concerned that you are paying a consultant $8,500 and yet they are not explaining anything to you
So what are you paying them for? They should be making sure that you understand exactly what is happening
OK:
For starters, no one can ‘add in’ a fee to the mortgage loan.
What they can do, is to ask you to sign a Disbursement Authority so that at settlement, your Solicitor will request a cheque be made payable to them for the amount you have agreed to pay them.
Mortgage loans are calculated in two ways:
Can you afford it? The lender applies servicing calculations which include your ordinary income, rent or other investment income, benchmark expenses, and the sensitised payment of the loan ie payment of the loan with an artificially high interest rate to ensure that if rates rise, you would still be operating within servicing parameters
Secondly, lenders lend to a Loan to Value Ratio. BankWest will lend to 95%LVR and allow capitalisation of the Mortgage Insurance to the loan. So you may end up with eg 97.23%LVR or some other slightly irregular amount.
This is capitalisation of the mortgage insurance premium, not capitalisation of your consultant’s fees. However, if you provide a Disbursement Authority to them, so that at settlement of the property when cheques are beig prepared, that there is a cheque prepared for your Solicitor, payment of rates etc and also payment of the consultant’s fees. Yes, I have mentioned this twice so that you read it at least once.
BankWest has an extensive range of products. Ten minutes checking out the BankWest website will show you what they offer. If you have applied for the Mortgage Shredder Home Loan, then the Mortgage Shredder Offset Account will cost you $15 per month.
However, as you have no doubt been told by your Broker, this particular product has a roll over provision and that there are other products on offer at the moment which will do what the Mortgage Shredder does but which are eligible for the Lite Offset Account, which costs $3.99 per month.
It seems to me that you are not asking for assistance from the people you are paying for assistance.
Alternatively, call BankWest direct and ask someone there to explain all the various features and benefits to you.
All this information is readily available online and through the lender's enquiry phone lines, but if you are paying for consulants then they should be making sure that you understand every step of the way, including product selection and why these particular products may be appropriate for you.
Hope this helps
Kristine