Traj Finance

Traj Finance Your Trusted Finance & Mortgage Broker Melbourne | Investment Lending | Refinance | Commercial Lending

Most of the clients who sit down with us right now open with the same question. Is this a bad time to buy?It's a fair qu...
03/09/2026

Most of the clients who sit down with us right now open with the same question. Is this a bad time to buy?

It's a fair question. Rates have been higher for a while, the headlines aren't cheerful, and everyone they know has told them to wait.

What we see from the inside is the other half of that picture.

The clients who are still buying aren't competing with 50 people on the front lawn any more. They're getting time to do their homework, vendors who are willing to talk, and a choice of properties rather than whatever is left after the auction.

The ones who did well through the last few cycles all bought like that. Uncomfortable at the time, and obvious with hindsight.

Rates are temporary. Every month they stay high is another month a buyers market stays open for the people prepared to use it.

The difference between the clients who can act now and the ones who can't usually comes down to two things. How the debt is structured, and whether there's a buffer behind every property so a rate rise is an inconvenience rather than a crisis.

None of this is a call to rush out and buy. Every position is different, and the structure has to be right before anything else happens.

It's a reminder that fear in the market and opportunity in the market usually turn up together. Most people only notice one of them.

01/09/2026

Some of the sharpest earners I met in private banking hadn't quite cracked investing.

Brilliant in their field and doing well on income, yet building wealth that pays you back was a different game.

Their money sat on what they earned, not on assets working away in the background.

What they were missing was an owner's mentality.

I went the other way. Between 2018 and 2023, I built 30 properties, each one picked to pay me whether I showed up to work or not.

Your income covers your lifestyle. Assets are what buy your freedom.

Tunnel vision has served me well, and I know that isn't a fashionable thing to admit.When I want something, I map it out...
31/08/2026

Tunnel vision has served me well, and I know that isn't a fashionable thing to admit.

When I want something, I map it out and go all in, because blocking out the noise is how anything decent gets done.

The catch is where you aim it.

Aim it at what you want to end up with, and it'll carry you a long way.

Once it hardens around one particular method, you stop hearing anything that might have helped.

I meet people locked onto an idea about property they picked up years ago from someone they trust.

- Debt is dangerous.

- Property was easy back then and impossible now.

- You should only buy where you live.

The verdict came in long before the evidence did.

Unlearning that takes a bit of work. You have to sit with the information yourself, get your head around how a strategy works underneath, then make your own call.

Taking someone else's word for it is the easy option, and it's the expensive one over twenty years.

Be stubborn about where you're heading.

Stay open about how you get there.

28/08/2026

Nobody ever taught me how money really works.

Turns out that's the story for most of us.

The advice we grow up with sounds sensible. Get an education, land a good job, earn a steady wage.

Well-meant, and passed straight down from parents repeating what they were told.

It holds a lot of good people back for life, and not for the reason you'd expect.

Took me years to work that one out.

I can usually tell in the first meeting who's going to end up with a portfolio, and it has very little to do with what t...
27/08/2026

I can usually tell in the first meeting who's going to end up with a portfolio, and it has very little to do with what they earn.

Even less to do with what they already own.

It's how they turn up.

- Documents sent through before we sit down
- Months of reading and listening behind them
- Ready to get the ball rolling

Fewer than one in ten people who come and see me are at that point.

The rest take the plan home to be checked by everyone they know, and I understand why.

Property is a big call, and nobody should be rushed.

What tends to surprise people is that the ready ones aren't the wealthiest in the room.

Some of my best clients started with very little.

Ambition tells you more about someone than their balance sheet does.

24/08/2026

A suburb dips a little and the urge to sell can take over.

It's a very human reaction.

Prices soften, nerves kick in, and getting out feels safer than sitting tight. The share market sees it constantly, and property catches plenty of people the same way.

Investors who hold steady usually bought with a clear reason behind them. They knew what they were in it for long before any wobble arrived.

A small dip only rattles you when the plan underneath is thin. Get clear on why you're buying, and those moments lose their sting.

20/08/2026

Plenty of investors know exactly what they want to buy next.

Ask them where it all lands, and the answer trails off.

Not having a clear picture is usually why people stall after a couple of properties.

Every purchase turns into a bit of a guess when there's no destination in mind.

I work the other way around.

I like to know the end result before I make the first move.

There's a simple way to lock in that target, and it shapes every decision that follows.

Leverage isn't one setting you pick at the start and live with forever.It moves as you move, and treating it like a fixe...
19/08/2026

Leverage isn't one setting you pick at the start and live with forever.

It moves as you move, and treating it like a fixed rule is how people end up stuck or stretched.

Starting out, leverage is the engine. You've got time, income coming in, and not much behind you yet, and borrowing is what gets those first purchases done.

Once you're building, your equity starts carrying some of the load.

The question becomes how the debt is held and what it sits against, rather than how much of it you can get.

Further along, leverage still earns its place at a lower level, with proper buffers behind everything you own.

Which is why we go through the balance sheet, the income, the equity and the capital position before anyone talks about a product.

Every client is different, and we're not here to push our own views onto anyone.

Our job is to lay out what's possible from a lending perspective and let the client set the pace.

The right amount of debt for you is a moving number, rather than a rule you inherit.

19/08/2026

Owning the machine always beats being the machine.

Plenty of people chase a bigger income to fund a bigger lifestyle.

The pay rise lands, the spending climbs to match, and nothing gets set aside for the things that pay you back.

I chased something different.

A growing asset base, built through property and borrowing, repeated year after year until I owned things that paid me every single day whether I worked or not.

You end up owning your income rather than renting it from a job.

5 things about buying your first home in Victoria that changed and nobody told youMost first home buyers think they're t...
17/08/2026

5 things about buying your first home in Victoria that changed and nobody told you

Most first home buyers think they're two or three years away.

That number is usually built on rules that don't apply anymore.

1. You don't need a 20% deposit.

Under the First Home Guarantee, an eligible buyer can get in with 5% and pay no lenders mortgage insurance. On a $600,000 home, that's the difference between needing $120,000 and needing $30,000.

2. You might pay zero stamp duty.

Buy your first home to live in and it's valued at $600,000 or under, you pay $0 duty in Victoria. Between $600,001 and $750,000 you get a sliding concession, not the full amount.

3. There's no income cap anymore.

As of October 2025, the First Home Guarantee dropped its income limits and its annual place cap. A lot of buyers who were locked out a year ago now qualify.

4. Your overtime and bonuses might actually count.

Bank calculators are blunt. The right broker knows which lenders count overtime, commission, penalty rates and self-employed income, and which ones quietly ignore it.

5. One knockback isn't a verdict.

Getting declined by one lender is a no from that lender. It's not a no from the market. We work with 40+ of them for exactly this reason.

Nobody ever calls the bottom of the market.

The only question worth asking is whether it's right for you.

Get your real numbers with the First Home Game Plan.

DM us "First Home Game Plan" and we'll give you a plan.

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