Propel Finance Group

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Propel Finance Group Clear, practical mortgage & business finance advice for home buyers, investors, and small business owners. Adelaide-based. Strategy-led. No pressure.

At Propel Finance Group, we make finance simple. Whether you’re buying a home, refinancing, or growing a business, we’ll help you find a loan that works for you. No pushy sales, just real conversations and honest guidance.

16/10/2026

Your home's gone up in value. But how much of that equity can you actually use?

Quick formula: the bank's valuation × 0.8, minus what you owe. On a $900,000 home with $200,000 owing, that's $520,000.

Go past 80% and you'll usually pay lenders mortgage insurance. And the part most people miss: equity is rarely the hard part. Income is.

Comment "EQUITY" and I'll send you the full story of how one Adelaide family used theirs.

General information only, not personal financial advice.

$700,000 of equity. They could use $520,000 of it. And that still wasn't the number that mattered most.One Adelaide fami...
15/10/2026

$700,000 of equity. They could use $520,000 of it. And that still wasn't the number that mattered most.

One Adelaide family wanted to move into a school zone. Their home had gone up a lot. But the real question was never how much equity they had. It was which lender would read their income properly.

Our first Propel Insights article walks through how it worked:

How much equity you can use before mortgage insurance kicks in
Why the bank's stress test mattered more than the equity
Whether to sell the old home or keep it as an investment
The trap their own bank would have walked them into

Comment "EQUITY" and I'll send you the full story, or find it at the link in our bio.



General information only, not personal financial advice.

Ten years of stamps. Still no free coffee.Home loans can work the same way. Lenders often save their sharpest rates for ...
13/10/2026

Ten years of stamps. Still no free coffee.

Home loans can work the same way. Lenders often save their sharpest rates for new customers, while borrowers who've stayed put for years quietly drift onto a higher one. Nobody calls to tell you. It just happens.

With every major lender's variable rate now starting with a 6, it's worth knowing where yours sits.

Three quick checks:
What rate are you actually paying today? It's on your statement or banking app.
When did you last ask your lender to review it?
Is your loan still set up for where you are now, not where you were when you took it out?

Our clients get a rate review from us every year, so they never have to wonder.

Comment "LOYAL", and I'll check whether your rate is still competitive.



General information only, not personal financial advice.

Your loan has to pass a test before you get the keys.When you apply, lenders don't just check whether you can afford tod...
06/10/2026

Your loan has to pass a test before you get the keys.

When you apply, lenders don't just check whether you can afford today's rate. They check whether you could still manage if rates were 3% higher. It's called the serviceability buffer.

With the lowest big four variable rate moving to 6.24% from Friday, most new loans are now tested at over 9%. Every rate rise lifts the bar, which means a little less borrowing power than a month ago, even if nothing else in your life has changed.

Two things worth knowing:

Not every lender assesses you the same way. How they treat your income, bonuses and existing debts can change the result more than the rate does.

Small changes before you apply, like closing an unused credit card or lowering its limit, can make a real difference.

Comment "TEST" and I'll run your numbers through it before a lender does, so there are no surprises.

General information only, not personal financial advice.

Say goodbye to the 5s.From Friday 9 October, the lowest advertised variable rate at any of the big four banks starts wit...
01/10/2026

Say goodbye to the 5s.

From Friday 9 October, the lowest advertised variable rate at any of the big four banks starts with a 6. All four passed on Tuesday's RBA rise in full, and Westpac's 5.99% was the last one standing. It's moving to 6.24%.

That leaves about a week before the new rates kick in. Here's how I'd use it.

Check what you're actually paying. Not the advertised rate, your rate. Borrowers who've been with the same lender for a few years are often paying more than what that lender offers new customers.

If there's a gap, ask your lender to close it. A short phone call is often enough. If they won't move, it might be worth seeing what else is out there.

Comment "RATE CHECK" and I'll compare your current rate against what's on offer right now, so you know where you stand before the 9th.

General information only, not personal financial advice.

Today's forecast: a 0.25% shower, right on schedule.The RBA lifted the cash rate to 4.60% this afternoon, the highest it...
29/09/2026

Today's forecast: a 0.25% shower, right on schedule.

The RBA lifted the cash rate to 4.60% this afternoon, the highest it's been since 2011. It was about as well forecast as a hot Adelaide January. All four major banks called it, and markets had it priced in.

What it means in practice: if your lender passes it on in full, that's roughly $100 more a month on a $600,000 loan. Worth checking when your lender's change kicks in.

Here's what the forecast can't tell you: whether this is the last one. Some economists think it could be the final rise of this cycle, but nobody knows for sure.

So the useful question isn't what happens at the next meeting. It's whether your plan still works if the weather stays wet for a while. That's what a buffer is for.

Comment "FORECAST" and I'll run your numbers with a rate rise built in, so you know exactly where you stand.

General information only, not personal financial advice.

25/09/2026

This week's jobs report showed unemployment tick up to 4.6%. Before you assume that's bad news, here's the part that actually matters.

August added 39,000 jobs, mostly part-time, reversing July's decline. Unemployment rose because more people went looking for work, not because businesses started cutting staff. Genuinely different story to the headline.

Add a global oil shock pushing costs up now and household budgets down later, plus inflation still sitting above target, and the case for a rate hike at this month's RBA meeting is about as strong as it's been all year.

None of that means don't buy. It means ask the right question. Not "what will rates do", nobody knows that for certain, but "can I afford this without stretching myself too thin".

Comment "STRESS TEST" and I'll run you through what some breathing room actually looks like on your numbers.

This is a general read on the economy, not financial advice specific to you.

Adelaide property still isn't telling one simple story.Our second Propel Market Monitor brings together the same five in...
22/09/2026

Adelaide property still isn't telling one simple story.

Our second Propel Market Monitor brings together the same five indicators, tracking what's actually changing across the market, not just the headline number.

For August:

🏠 Homes are still moving quickly, a median 33 days on market, a day faster than a year ago.
📈 Annual growth has eased to 8.6%, and for the first time in this series, both the monthly (-0.8%) and quarterly (-1.6%) figures went backwards.
🔑 There's considerably more stock available than this time last year, our supply index sits at 124.4 against the August 2025 benchmark, listings up close to a quarter year on year.
🔨 Auction demand has held steady, the four-week clearance rate is sitting at 48.0%, almost identical to July's reading despite plenty of week to week movement.
🏘️ Rentals remain exceptionally tight, Adelaide's vacancy rate is unchanged at 0.6%.

So, what's the bigger picture?

Growth is clearly slowing and prices eased slightly through August, but that's happening alongside more stock, steady auction demand, and a rental market that's about as tight as it gets. Nothing here points to a market moving in a straight line, more a market adjusting on several fronts at once.

The RBA meets again on the 29th. We'll be looking at what that decision means for all five of these indicators next week.

If you're weighing up buying, selling or investing over the next few months, comment "monitor" and I'll walk you through what these numbers actually mean for your specific situation.

Sources: Cotality and SQM Research. Data as shown in the August 2026 Propel Market Monitor.

When we first mapped this out with a client, the plan was a 12 month runway to hit two goals: an investment property now...
17/09/2026

When we first mapped this out with a client, the plan was a 12 month runway to hit two goals: an investment property now, and a home of his own down the track. Most people assume goals like that take as long as they take.

We started with the end goal in mind, structuring the investment loan to protect his future borrowing capacity rather than treating each purchase as its own separate decision. What we'd planned for 12 months, he actually achieved in six: investment property settled, the owner-occupied purchase within reach, and a small cash flow buffer left over to help manage things along the way.

This is a general example of how sequencing and structure can accelerate a plan, not advice for your own situation; everyone's numbers and goals are different. If you're weighing up which to do first, investing or upgrading, comment "strategy" and I'll walk you through how the order of operations matters.

Tax refund season means somebody's counting the numbers, might as well be someone who knows what to do with them.For man...
15/09/2026

Tax refund season means somebody's counting the numbers, might as well be someone who knows what to do with them.

For many first home buyers, this refund can be one of the most straightforward ways to add a real chunk to a deposit without touching everyday savings. It's landing right through September for most people who lodged through an accountant.

Not a huge amount on its own, but paired with regular savings, it can shave real time off how long you're saving for.

Comment "refund", and I'll walk you through what it could mean for your own deposit timeline, no obligation either way.

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22A Beulah Road
Adelaide, SA
5067

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Tuesday 9am - 5pm
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