Investment loans, structured for the next property.

Most investors who walk in have been sold an investment loan as if it were the same product as their owner-occupier — five-year fixed, 30-year P&I, no offset. That's a defensible loan for a primary residence. On an investment, it's almost never optimal. The difference between a properly structured investment loan and a packaged one is roughly $4,000 to $9,000 a year in cashflow on a typical $650K loan — every year, for the life of the property. The levers are interest-only versus principal-and-interest, offset versus redraw, and how the loan is cross-collateralised — or, better, not cross-collateralised — with the rest of the portfolio. Interest-only bumps the total cost of the loan a little — you're not paying the principal down — but it frees a meaningful sum each month in cashflow against the equivalent P&I. Directed at your non-deductible debt — the owner-occupier offset — that freed cashflow improves your overall position rather than paying down deductible investment principal. It can also service the next property or fund the renovation that lifts the rent. Lender appetite for investment varies. A major bank or a second-tier bank tends to price hard for clean PAYG investors at 80% LVR. The major banks lean into investors with full packages and offset against owner-occupier. Several second-tier banks are competitive on rentvest. The specialist non-banks pick up the files where the existing portfolio is heavy and the banks have hit serviceability ceilings — at a higher rate but with a wider DSR. The job is to set the loan up so the next property is easier, not harder, to write. We model the second purchase from the first one. We keep loans uncrossed where possible, we keep the rental income directed cleanly, and we make sure the file the credit officer reads next year tells a coherent story.