Our home loans

Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) is an insurance policy that helps the lender recover their losses if you can’t pay back your home loan. LMI is required when you have a loan-to-value ratio higher than 80% (meaning you are borrowing more than 80% of the home’s value), because this is considered a higher risk for the lender. The cost of this insurance is passed onto you when your loan application is approved. You can use this calculator to estimate how much you will pay for LMI based on the estimated property value and your deposit.

The main difference between an owner-occupier home loan and an investment home loan is the purpose of the loan. As the name implies, an owner-occupier home loan is meant for the purchase of a house for you to live in. An investment loan is for a property that you won’t personally live in, and may choose to rent out to tenants or renovate for profit. Both types of loans function almost identically, however investment loans typically have a higher rate of interest. This is because managing an investment property is considered a greater risk to the lender.

Yes, you can! If you’re eligible, you can apply for the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme to get a variable or fixed rate home loan from bcu with a deposit of a little of 5%, and without needing to pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance. There are limited scheme places offered by the Australian government each year so it pays to register early.

With a fixed interest rate, you can lock in your interest rate and be sure of what your home loan repayments will be for the fixed period. This means you can budget for your loan repayments with certainty. A variable rate means that your interest rate can change as the cash rate changes, so you could potentially pay more or less in interest than someone with a fixed rate loan, depending on market rate movements. As with all financial products, the choice between a fixed and variable interest rate is a trade-off.

Like any financial institution, bcu has eligibility criteria for each home loan that we offer. Before we can approve your loan application, we need to make sure that you meet our lending criteria so that we are confident you can afford the monthly principal and interest repayments against what you borrow.

bcu credit products and requirements follow the same structure and operate the same way as the major banks. The main difference between bcu and the majors is how profit is managed. bcu reinvests it’s profit back into improving products and services for its members. Major banks, those with private investors distribute their profit to shareholders.