Searching for your home and loan

You're probably focused on choosing the right home. But finding the right home loan is just as important.

Apply for a home loan.

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Choosing a home

Think about your priorities. For example, which is most important out of the location, size, and style of your new home? You can search for properties online with sites such as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.

Seek expert advice. Get a building inspector and pest expert to inspect your prospective new home, and have a solicitor to look at the sale contract. If you’re buying an apartment you’ll need a strata inspection.

There are two main types of property sale. See more about auctions vs private sales. In both cases you'll pay your deposit (normally 5-20% of the purchase price) when your offer is accepted. You pay the balance at settlement, which is usually 30-90 days later.

When you look at properties, you might want to take:

Choosing a loan

Start by making sure that you understand the terms variable rate, fixed rate, split loan, and interest-only loan.

Think about your situation, and which home loan features suit you. You might want to compare our home loans.

As well as interest rates, think about other features:

  • 100% offset uses money in a linked transaction account to reduce your interest charges, while keeping the money available to you.
  • NAB Choice Package, offers you discounted home loan interest rates and savings on credit cards and other product and services for one annual fee.
  • Redraw is available with all of our variable rate home loans. If you're far enough ahead with your repayments, you have the option to withdraw the available excess funds on your home loan account.
  • Repayment holidays are available with most of our variable rate home loans. If you're far enough ahead with your repayments, you could take a break for 2-12 months.

You might want to start with the home loans that are most popular with other first home buyers:

Getting more help


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Buying at auction vs private sale

  Auction Private sale
"Cooling off" period None. If you win the auction you can't change your mind. There might be a "cooling off" period, depending on your state's laws.
Deposit payment Normally you'll have to pay the full deposit straight away. When your offer is accepted, you need to pay the full deposit.
Reports and inspections You need to have your reports and inspections done before the auction. If there's a "cooling off" period you can use it to complete your reports and inspections, and withdraw your offer if anything is wrong.
Price You don't know the reserve price (ie. the minimum that the seller will accept) until it's been reached. You know the asking price.
Competition Competition from bidders can inflate the price. If a number of people make offers the price can rise.
Contract terms The vendor sets the contract terms that apply to the offer at auction. You may be able to negotiate some contract terms.

If you're buying at auction see the ‘Buying at Auction’ fact sheet on the Real Estate Institute of Australia’s website.


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Variable rate loans

The variable interest rate could move up or down over the life of loan.

Yes

If interest rates move down, your minimum repayments could change too.

Variable rate loans allow extra flexibility, like the ability to make unlimited extra repayments without paying economic costs, so you can get ahead and pay your loan off sooner.
No

If interest rates go up, your repayments could too.

Popular variable rate loans for first home buyers are:


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Fixed rate loans

A fixed rate means your loan's interest rate, and your repayments, will stay the same for the fixed rate period (eg. 1, 3 or 5 years). After the fixed rate period you can choose to lock into another fixed rate, change to a variable rate loan, or split your loan between both.

Yes

It's easy to budget when you know what your repayments will be each month.

You can avoid rate rises, potentially saving you interest.
No

With our fixed rate loans you can make up to $20,000 in extra repayments without economic costs. Over $20,000 you may be charged economic costs.

If interest rates move down, your fixed interest rate won't. This means you could miss out on some savings from reduced minimum repayments.

Popular fixed rate loans for first home buyers are:


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Split your loan into two loans

You can fund your property with two loans, so one part of it is fixed and the other a separate variable interest rate loan. You decide how to separate your two loans. For example you could fund 80% of the property price with a variable rate loan, and the remaining 20% of the property with a separate fixed rate loan; or 50% each way.

Yes

If interest rates move up during a fixed rate period, the interest and repayments on the fixed rate loan will stay the same.
No

If interest rates move down, you'll only get the savings on the variable loan, as your fixed rate loan repayments will stay the same during the fixed rate period.


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Interest-only loans

Normally when you repay a loan, your repayment goes towards the interest accrued and some of the loan amount that you borrowed (which is called the "principal").

During an interest-only period, you only pay back the interest that your loan incurs. This reduces your repayments.

At the end of the interest-only period your repayments go towards the interest and principal.

Yes

Lower repayments during the interest-only period.
No

During the interest-only period you don't repay any principal. Your repayments after the interest-only period go towards your interest and principal.

Most of our home loans offer an interest-only period, except the NAB Introductory Rate Home Loan.


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