The ones we get asked every week.

That's often exactly when people find us. A decline usually means you didn't match one lender's policy on one day — not that the deal is impossible. Lenders treat new ABNs, contract income, trust structures and credit history very differently from one another.

We'll look at why it was declined, then work out whether it's a case for a policy exception, a different lender, or a restructured application. Sometimes the honest answer is still no — but you'll get it only after the options have been exhausted, not instead of trying.

Not residential property, not any more. From 10 August 2026 a super fund can no longer enter a new limited recourse borrowing arrangement to buy a house or unit. That's legislation, not a lender policy, so no broker can work around it.

Two things still work. Your fund can borrow to buy business real property — broadly, premises used wholly for running a business, including your own — and if you already hold a residential SMSF loan it's grandfathered, so you can keep it and still refinance it. If yours has a 7 in front of the rate, that refinance is worth a conversation.

SMSF lending was a specialty of ours before the change and the remaining work is more technical, not less. Whether any of it suits your fund is an investment and tax question for your accountant and SMSF adviser — we handle the lending.

No, but it does need a starting point — usually a property you already own with some equity in it, or a deposit and an income a lender is comfortable with. What it doesn't need is a high salary or any prior knowledge.

Plenty of our clients started with one ordinary home and no idea what equity was. If you're not there yet, that's still worth a conversation: knowing what you're aiming at is most of the work.

Enough to cover the deposit and the buying costs on the next one — as a rough guide, around 25% of its price once you include stamp duty and fees. Use our equity calculator to see where you land.

But equity is only half the test. The lender also has to be satisfied your income can carry both loans at the same time, assessed at a rate higher than you'll actually pay. Plenty of people have the equity and not the serviceability, and that's a very different problem with very different solutions.

Very often it doesn't, especially early on. The difference comes out of your own pocket each month, which is why we work out that number before you buy rather than after. Add vacancy periods, rates, insurance, maintenance and management fees and the true holding cost is usually higher than people expect.

A property you can comfortably hold through a bad year is worth more than a slightly better one you can't.

Because lenders assess existing debt very differently, and the order you approach them in can decide whether property three is possible at all. Some are generous on the first loan and unusable on the third. Others are the opposite.

There's also the tangle risk: if the same bank holds everything as one bundled security, selling or refinancing one property means renegotiating all of them. Keeping loans separate costs nothing extra and preserves your options.

For most residential loans, nothing. The lender pays us a commission when your loan settles, and it doesn't change the rate you're offered. A small number of complex or commercial files carry a fee — if yours is one, we tell you the amount in writing before any work starts.

It's the ideal time, actually. How your first loan is structured — the lender, the loan splits, whether there's an offset, how the ownership is held — either makes the second property straightforward or makes it a renovation job later. Getting that right at the start costs nothing.