Loan Location • New Tools • Mortgage Calculators
We’ve been rebuilding Loan Location — and there are some very useful new tools to play with
We have been giving the Loan Location website a fairly serious overhaul — not just changing colours and moving buttons around, but building better ways to explain home loans, understand the numbers and answer some of the questions clients ask us every day.
The banking glossary is back, key lending terms now have their own interactive calculators, and we have built our own Mortgage Lab to help you explore repayments, offsets, extra payments, deposits and different mortgage scenarios without needing a finance degree to use it.
A finance website should help you understand finance
Mortgage websites have traditionally been very good at telling people to “get in touch” and slightly less good at helping them understand what they are actually getting in touch about.
We wanted to improve that.
Over the past little while we have been rebuilding large parts of Loan Location around a fairly simple idea: if there is a mortgage concept we regularly explain to clients, our website should be able to explain it properly too.
And where a number is easier to understand by actually changing it yourself, we would rather give you a calculator and let you have a play.
The idea: less mysterious banking language, more useful information, and calculators that help answer the question behind the number.
1. The Loan Location banking glossary is back
Finance has an impressive ability to turn relatively simple ideas into three-letter acronyms.
LVR. DTI. LMI. Offset. Comparison rate. Equity. Serviceability.
Brokers and lenders use these terms every day, but we do not think clients should be expected to already know what all of them mean.
So we have brought back the Loan Location banking glossary and started rebuilding it as a proper home-loan learning centre rather than a dictionary full of one-line definitions.
The aim is to explain mortgage terminology in normal Australian English, show practical examples and explain why a particular term can actually matter when you are buying, refinancing or investing.
Our glossary rule: if an explanation requires you to Google three more banking terms just to understand the first one, we haven't explained it properly.
2. LVR now comes with its own calculator
One of the first glossary terms we gave the full treatment was loan-to-value ratio, normally shortened to LVR.
LVR compares the amount being borrowed with the property value accepted by the lender. It can influence things such as lender policy, available products, pricing, lenders mortgage insurance and how much equity may be available.
Rather than simply giving you the formula, our new LVR page lets you enter a loan amount and property value and see the percentage immediately.
We have also added practical examples showing what can happen when a valuation changes, how LVR works when refinancing and why percentages such as 80%, 90% and 95% come up so often in home-loan conversations.
The calculator is an educational tool. A lender's accepted property value and lending policy can differ from the figures you enter.
3. You can calculate your debt-to-income ratio too
Debt-to-income ratio — or DTI — has become an increasingly important number in Australian home lending.
In simple terms, it compares total debt limits with verified gross annual income.
But the interesting part is not just the formula. Understanding what counts as debt, how credit-card limits can affect the number and why DTI is different from borrowing capacity can make the concept much easier to understand.
Our new DTI page explains the terminology and includes an interactive calculator so you can test the numbers yourself.
Worth remembering: an LVR or DTI number is one part of a lending assessment. Neither number, by itself, tells you whether a lender will approve a home loan.
4. And then we got slightly carried away and built our own Mortgage Lab
Most mortgage repayment calculators answer one question:
“What is my repayment?”
Useful — but that is rarely where the conversation ends.
People want to know what happens if rates change. What an offset account could do. Whether an extra $50 a week actually matters. How much sooner the mortgage could disappear. How a larger deposit changes the loan. Or what they would need to do to become mortgage-free five years earlier.
So we built the Loan Location Mortgage Lab.
Instead of producing one repayment figure and sending you on your way, the Mortgage Lab lets you build a scenario and then start changing the levers.
- Enter your own loan balance and interest rate
- Compare different repayment frequencies
- Add an offset balance
- Model regular contributions into the offset
- Test extra repayments
- Stress-test higher or lower interest rates
- Estimate your mortgage-free date
- See the estimated time and interest saved
- Test different deposit percentages when buying
- Estimate how long it could take to reach a deposit target
5. Why we built the tools ourselves
There are already plenty of mortgage calculators on the internet.
We did not particularly want to build another calculator that asks for a loan amount, multiplies a few numbers and produces a monthly repayment.
We wanted tools that reflected the conversations we actually have with clients.
Someone considering a refinance may care much more about the effect of an offset or additional repayments than the basic scheduled repayment.
A first home buyer may be trying to understand the relationship between their deposit, loan amount and LVR.
An investor may want to understand how their existing debts interact with their income.
And someone ten years into a mortgage may simply want to know:
“What would it actually take to get rid of this thing earlier?”
That is the direction of the new Loan Location website: start with the real question, explain the finance properly, then give you something useful to do with the information.
6. The calculators aren't replacing the broker
There is an important distinction here.
These tools are designed to help you explore a scenario and understand the terminology. They are not pretending to reproduce every lender's credit policy or tell you whether a loan will be approved.
A real lending assessment can involve income type, living expenses, credit limits, existing debts, property type, valuation, employment history, lender policy and plenty of other wonderfully exciting things that do not fit neatly into one calculator.
The calculators help make the numbers easier to understand.
Then, when you want to know what those numbers mean for an actual home loan, that is where we come in.
Have a play with the new Loan Location tools
The website will keep evolving, but these are a few good places to start.
And we're not finished. The idea is to keep expanding the glossary, calculators and educational tools so more of the mortgage process can be understood before you ever need to pick up the phone.
The bottom line
Buying a home, refinancing a mortgage or working out what to do next can involve some serious financial decisions.
Understanding the language and being able to experiment with the numbers makes those decisions a little less mysterious.
That is what the latest Loan Location rebuild is really about.
Not more banking jargon.
Not another calculator that gives you one number and wishes you luck.
Just better explanations, better tools and a clearer way to understand what the numbers around your home loan are actually doing.
Final thought: have a play. Change the numbers. Break the calculator — we dare you. And if you find a scenario that looks interesting, we can help work out whether it stacks up in the real lending world.
Found a mortgage scenario you'd like us to look at?
If you have been experimenting with the Mortgage Lab, checking your LVR or trying to understand your borrowing position, we can help take the next step and compare the scenario against actual lender options and lending policy.
General information only: The information and calculators on this website provide general information and estimates only. They do not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs and do not constitute financial, investment, tax, legal or credit advice. Calculator results are not a quote, credit assessment, recommendation or guarantee of approval or savings. Actual lender calculations, valuations, interest rates, repayments, fees, credit policies and eligibility requirements can differ. Your full financial situation should be considered before making a financial decision.