Sydney mortgage broker

Seven pockets of the city centre, and almost all of it is apartments in towers. That is the whole lending story here. New buildings at Barangaroo and Circular Quay sit alongside older stock around Wynyard, Martin Place and Town Hall, while the mixed use blocks through Chinatown and World Square raise a separate question again, because retail or hotel floors underneath change how a lender reads the building.

Many lenders cap how much they will advance inside a large block, set a minimum internal floor size that catches studios and small one bedders, and keep their own lists of buildings they will not touch at all.

The ring around the city, and the most mixed stock in Sydney. Warehouse conversions through Chippendale, Redfern, Eveleigh and Darlington. Terraces in Surry Hills, Erskineville, Camperdown, Forest Lodge, Darlinghurst and St Peters. New apartment towers running through Zetland, Waterloo, Rosebery, Alexandria and Beaconsfield.

On the harbour side, The Rocks, Millers Point, Dawes Point, Pyrmont, Ultimo and Haymarket are almost entirely strata, and east of the city Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay, Rushcutters Bay, Woolloomooloo, Centennial Park and Moore Park mix older blocks with terraces. Studios and small apartments are where most applications here come unstuck, because lenders set minimum floor sizes and they are not the same from one lender to the next.

From the beaches at Bondi, Coogee and Maroubra to the harbour side at Rose Bay, Vaucluse and Watsons Bay, with Bellevue Hill, Paddington, Randwick and Waverley in between. This is where loan size starts to matter as much as anything else, because past a certain point lenders add their own checks, want more documentation and cap how much of the value they will lend.

Those limits differ enormously between lenders, and the older art deco blocks along the beaches raise building questions of their own. Yields here are low against the prices, so if you are buying to invest, your own income carries far more of the assessment than the rent does.

Two very different markets running through thirty two suburbs. Houses at Killara, Pymble, Gordon, Turramurra, Wahroonga, St Ives, Lindfield, Roseville, Hunters Hill, Mosman, Northbridge and Castlecrag sit at loan sizes where lender limits start to bite. Apartments along the rail corridor through Chatswood, Artarmon, St Leonards, Wollstonecraft, Crows Nest and North Sydney are decided by the building rather than by you.

Around the lower harbour, Kirribilli, Milsons Point, Lavender Bay, McMahons Point, Neutral Bay, Cremorne and Cammeray are almost all strata, while Ryde, Gladesville, Lane Cove, Willoughby, Epping, Hornsby and Berowra carry a mix of both. Our office is on Blaxland Rd in Ryde, so this is home ground, and the health precinct at St Leonards puts a lot of local buyers on lender lists that waive mortgage insurance entirely.

The peninsula runs from Manly, Freshwater and Balgowlah up through Dee Why, Collaroy, Narrabeen and Warriewood to Mona Vale, Newport, Bayview, Avalon Beach and Palm Beach. Behind it sit the forest suburbs at Belrose, Frenchs Forest, Terrey Hills, Killarney Heights, Seaforth and Brookvale.

Stock is thin and it holds, which means published medians swing between sources and lenders face the same thin evidence when they value one. Bushfire and flood overlays appear on titles through the forest and around the lagoons. Insurance is usually the practical problem rather than approval, because a lender wants the property covered before settlement and cover in overlay areas can be expensive or slow to place.

Terraces and semis through Balmain, Rozelle, Lilyfield, Annandale, Glebe, Leichhardt, Newtown, Stanmore, Petersham and Marrickville, with heritage overlays across a good deal of it. Federation streets at Haberfield, Ashfield, Summer Hill, Dulwich Hill, Five Dock and Abbotsford, and newer apartment stock at Mascot, Homebush, Strathfield and Kensington.

Buying a terrace on its own title is a different lending question from buying in a block, and renovating one is different again once a heritage listing is involved. A lot of buyers here are upgrading from an apartment rather than starting out, which makes it two transactions instead of one, and the order you sell and buy in decides how much you pay.

From townhouses at Castle Hill, Baulkham Hills, Winston Hills, North Rocks and Carlingford, out along the Metro through Norwest, Bella Vista, Kellyville, North Kellyville, Beaumont Hills, Rouse Hill, Box Hill and Nelson, to acreage at Glenhaven, Dural, Middle Dural, Kenthurst, Annangrove, Glenorie, Maraylya and Pennant Hills.

Further out again, riverfront and rural land at Wisemans Ferry, Lower Portland, Leets Vale, Sackville North, Cattai, Maroota and South Maroota brings zoning, access and flood mapping into it. A lot of people here own more than one property, and once you do, how the loans are put together decides what you can do next. If one lender holds several as security for the same borrowing, every request gets slower and every answer more conservative.

High density towers at Wolli Creek, Arncliffe, Rockdale, Kogarah and Hurstville, and older brick houses through Bexley, Penshurst, Mortdale and Oatley. Along the bay, Brighton-Le-Sands, Monterey and Sans Souci mix apartments with freestanding homes.

The apartment side is where lenders differ most, with caps on larger blocks and minimum floor sizes catching smaller units. Parts of the area sit under the flight path, and a valuer will note it even though it rarely stops a loan. This is also one of the areas where the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme genuinely reaches, because unit prices sit at a level the scheme can cover.

One of the largest first home buyer markets in Sydney. Prices through Lakemba, Punchbowl, Yagoona, Bass Hill, Chester Hill, Greenacre, Condell Park and Bankstown sit where a smaller deposit still works. North of them, Campsie, Belmore, Canterbury, Ashbury, Croydon Park, Earlwood and Roselands carry a lot of older walk up blocks.

South and west, Beverly Hills, Kingsgrove, Riverwood, Padstow, Panania, Revesby and East Hills are more house than unit. Lenders ask questions about the older buildings rather than about you. Granny flats and secondary dwellings come up constantly here, and whether the rent from one counts towards what you can borrow depends entirely on the lender.

The coast at Cronulla and Woolooware, waterfront and canal frontage through Como, Sylvania Waters and Taren Point, the centres at Miranda, Caringbah, Kirrawee, Gymea and Sutherland, and the bushland edge at Bangor, Engadine and Bundeena against the Royal National Park.

Waterfront titles bring their own questions, because a valuer looks at frontage, access and what sits between the house and the water, and lenders differ on all of it. The apartment stock at Cronulla, Miranda and Kirrawee is where high density caps come into it, and the houses behind them are a different assessment again.

Parramatta sits at the centre of it, where three quarters of the stock is apartments and the building matters more than the borrower. Around it, Westmead, Northmead, Granville, Merrylands, Guildford, Wentworthville, Toongabbie, Pendle Hill, Constitution Hill and Greystanes sit at prices where a first home is still reachable on a smaller deposit.

Further west, Blacktown, Mount Druitt, Rooty Hill and Fairfield are house markets, while Auburn and Lidcombe have their own high density pockets and their own lender caps. The towers around Parramatta station are where applications stall, on caps inside large blocks, minimum floor sizes, and lender lists of buildings they will not touch. Westmead and the health precinct put a lot of local buyers on lists that waive mortgage insurance.

New estates at Jordan Springs, Glenmore Park, Cranebrook, Cambridge Gardens and Werrington Downs. Established streets through Penrith, Kingswood, Werrington, Cambridge Park, South Penrith, Jamisontown, St Marys and Emu Plains. Acreage and rural land out at Mulgoa, Orchard Hills, Regentville and Badgerys Creek.

More people build here than anywhere else we cover, which makes construction lending the thing worth getting right. A construction loan is valued on what the property will be worth once the work is finished rather than on the land as it stands, and you only pay interest on what has been drawn at each stage. Getting the drawdown schedule to line up with the builder is most of the job.