Negotiating home loan rate

Hi,

I am looking for Home Loan from Westpac (to get staff benefits).
Though they give decent discount to every employee, they mentioned that the discount is reasonable and no further discount could be given.

Effectively, it is 7.06% variable rate. Now, does anyone know if the Bank (Westpac particularly) can go further down with the rate? If yes, how much should I aim to get and how should I make bank agree to that?

Any tips are appreciated.

regards
v.
 
7.06% equates to a 0.8% discount with Westpac at the moment. It's a slight discount on their regular customer rates, but it's nothing special.

As a comparison, ANZ currently start with a standard 0.8% discount and will reduce further from there, especially if the loan is over $500k. Many other lenders are also doing similar things right now.

I beleive the main benefit of staff discounts with Westpac is that they don't charge the LMI up to 90%. This can represent a substantial saving if you don't have a 20%+ deposit.

If you don't need to borrow more than 80%, I'd suggest staff loyalty is misplaced with most lenders. My observation is most lenders usually treat staff worse than they treat regular customers. They tend to have the belief that their staff wouldn't bother to shop around.
 
Thanks for your prompt response. Yes, you are right, I can increase LVR and still make some savings on LMI. Having said that, question is, do I still have room to further negotiate the rate?

Please note that loan application is under review, at the moment.

regards
v.
 
Hi,

I am looking for Home Loan from Westpac (to get staff benefits).
Though they give decent discount to every employee, they mentioned that the discount is reasonable and no further discount could be given.

Effectively, it is 7.06% variable rate. Now, does anyone know if the Bank (Westpac particularly) can go further down with the rate? If yes, how much should I aim to get and how should I make bank agree to that?

Any tips are appreciated.

regards
v.

Someone here mentioned in a post that he/she had 1.05% discount off Westpac's SVR.
 
As Peter said there is a lot of offers on the table at the moment and his comments re the LMI benefit are spot on, if LMI is involved it is not to be sneezed at.

This is what I am working on with Westpac if it helps you 'have the chat' with them. As you can see it is based on total lending.

$250k-400k 0.75%
$400k-500k 0.8%
$500-600k 0.85%
$600-750k 0.9%
$750k – 1mill 0.95%
1mill + 1%

I am not sure if this is available for everyone. Maybe I am letting the cat out of the bag. I did help a client with a Westpac loan recently and the rate was better than the Westpac private banker could do - so go figure, Westpac A+ mortgage brokers sometimes get better rates to offer as well.

Hope it helps, go get them
Jane
 
A friend of mine works very high up in Westpac and he convinced them to give him a 1% discount for his loan. However for the amount he was borrowing they would have given him this discount regardless of if he was staff or not.

Believe it or not it is quite common for bank staff to go with another bank to get their loan. Staff discounts tend to be pretty lousy, with the exception of waived LMI. And some departments are worried about privacy issues as their colleagues may be able to access their personal information.

One major bank we work with did a study and found that less than 10% of their staff have a home loan with them. Hard to say exactly what percentage go elsewhere as we don't know how many of the staff have a home loan as opposed to those that do not. We have done plenty of loans for bank staff and I expect other mortgage brokers have too.
 
The last person you want to know that you have lost your job or have funny spending habits is your mortgagee who also happens to be your employer.

The vast number of senior bank folk we have as clients often have ONE "token" loan with their employer and the balance far elsewhere...............

ta
rolf
 
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