Let's talk about your debt & financial commitments

Almost every first home buyer we meet has some kind of debt — and these days, that’s completely normal. What matters isn’t the history, it’s having a clear strategy for dealing with it before you apply for a home loan.

See the smarter payoff order

Debt has become the norm

Twenty or thirty years ago, this wasn’t really a thing. Now, it’s rare to meet a first home buyer without at least one of these along the way.

Student loans from university

A car on hire purchase

Travel put on a credit card

A new TV or appliance on interest-free terms

The logical order isn't always the right order

Your first instinct might be to pay off the highest interest rate debt first — and normally, that’s good financial sense. But when you’re preparing for a mortgage application, the goal shifts.

What actually matters is reducing your total monthly repayments — not the interest you’re paying. That can mean paying off an interest-free loan before an interest-bearing one, simply because it frees up more of your income each month.

WORTH REMEMBERING

It's about repayments, not interest rates

Banks assess what’s left of your income after your existing repayments — not how much interest you’re paying overall. A debt strategy built around your mortgage application looks completely different to a normal “pay off debt” plan.

WHY IT MATTERS

Debt repayments come straight off what you have available

$400 debt repayments

$600 left over

On $1,000 of income, $400 going toward debt repayments leaves just $600 for everyday living costs and your mortgage — and banks may decide that’s simply not enough. Every dollar freed up from repayments is a dollar that can go toward what you can actually borrow.

Sometimes, consolidating debt is the smarter move

We’ll often help first home buyers consolidate several debts into one — bringing the total repayment down, even if that means folding an interest-free loan into an interest-bearing one. It can sound counterintuitive, but the goal is always the same: get your monthly repayments as low as possible, so more of your income counts toward your mortgage.