Intellect Finance

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Intellect Finance Intellect Finance is the best Mortgage Broker located in Penrith. Joe and the team put the customers first with a personal approach.

Specialising in a large range of loans including; Home Loans, Commercial Loans, Vehicle Loans, Equipment Loans, Business Loans, Investor Loans, Self-Employed Loans, Construction Loans, a... Specialising in a large range of loans including; Home Loans, Commercial Loans, Vehicle Loans, Equipment Loans, Business Loans, Investor Loans, Self-Employed Loans, Construction Loans, and Personal Loans. We help customers with their first home purchase, Investment property, Vehicles or equipment, and asset finance. If you are looking for the best Mortgage Broker in Penrith, then look no further! We service clients throughout Greater Western Sydney and beyond, perfectly located for Kingswood, Orchard Hills, Caddens, Cranebrook, Glenmore Park, Jamisontown, Mulgoa, Blaxland the Blue Mountains, and all surrounds.

Booking profitable jobs, but still running dry? You’re not alone.Fuel cost 14.8% more in August than in July (ABS). On a...
16/10/2026

Booking profitable jobs, but still running dry? You’re not alone.

Fuel cost 14.8% more in August than in July (ABS). On a fixed-price job, that comes straight out of the margin. And the fuel gets paid this week, while the progress claim might take 30, 45 or 60 days to come in.

That gap is where cash runs short, even on jobs that make money overall.

Two things worth checking: whether your contracts allow for cost increases (a question for your solicitor), and whether your working capital facility was sized on last year’s costs.

If it was, our team can look at whether it still fits the business you’re running now. Send us a message or call 1800 733 000.

General information only, not personal advice.

Christmas Eve is a Thursday this year.If you’re hoping to settle a purchase, a refinance or a business acquisition befor...
15/10/2026

Christmas Eve is a Thursday this year.

If you’re hoping to settle a purchase, a refinance or a business acquisition before then, the date that matters is a lot earlier than the 24th.

A settlement is the last link in a chain:

The application gets assessed.
A valuer inspects.
The lender issues approval, then loan documents, which get signed and sent back.
The solicitors or conveyancers on each side book a settlement time.
On a refinance, the outgoing lender has to process a discharge.
Each of those steps sits on someone else’s desk, and December is when those desks are shortest of people.

Then there’s the calendar. Christmas Day is a Friday, and Boxing Day falls on a Saturday, so in NSW the Monday after is a public holiday as well. New Year’s Day is the following Friday. That leaves three business days between Christmas and New Year, and plenty of firms won’t open for them.

I don’t know how turnaround times will run this December. They shift week to week, and nobody can promise a date that depends on a lender’s credit team. What I do know is that a file lodged in October has room to absorb a delay, and one lodged in December has very little.

If there’s something you’d like settled before the break, we can tell you whether the timing still works.

Send us a message or call us on 1800 733 000

General information only, not personal advice.

A lot of small business lending in Sydney sits on top of someone’s house and Sydney houses are worth 7% less than a year...
12/10/2026

A lot of small business lending in Sydney sits on top of someone’s house and Sydney houses are worth 7% less than a year ago.

Here’s the run down.

If you’d like to know how the changes in your home value may impact your business lending - shoot me a message or call the team on 1800 733 000

Every mortgage holder in the country is running the same numbers as of yesterday afternoon. Business owners have a secon...
30/09/2026

Every mortgage holder in the country is running the same numbers as of yesterday afternoon. Business owners have a second set to run.

The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate by 0.25 percentage points today, to 4.60%. It’s the fourth increase this year, and the rate started 2026 at 3.60%. On a $600,000 home loan over 30 years, today’s move adds around $100 a month if it’s passed on in full. That figure will lead most of tonight’s coverage.

The second set of numbers belongs to anyone carrying business debt. If that loan is secured against the family home, both sets sit on the same property.

The part of the RBA’s statement I kept rereading sits further down. The Board said new housing loans have declined noticeably and prices have fallen in most capital cities.

In the same paragraph, it said growth in business investment and business debt is strong.

Households have pulled back and businesses are still borrowing. A full percentage point over the year lands hard on a business balance sheet. On $2 million of variable business debt, it comes to roughly $20,000 a year in extra interest if it’s all passed through, before anything else in the business has changed.

On what comes next, the RBA said it will be guided by the data and will lift rates again if it judges that necessary. I don’t know which way the next meeting goes, and I’d be wary of anyone who says they do.

If I were running a business with debt on it this week, I’d want two answers. When does the facility next get reviewed, and what ratio does the lender test it against? And how much headroom does that ratio have left at 4.60%?

Worst case, the answers are uncomfortable and you’ve found out with months to act. Best case, there’s room and you can stop thinking about it.

If you’d like someone to look over a facility before its next review, Charbel runs most of our commercial work. Send me a message and I’ll put you in touch.

General information only, not personal advice.

School holidays are here and we’re open right through them.If you’ve been meaning to sort out a loan, a refinance, or le...
28/09/2026

School holidays are here and we’re open right through them.

If you’ve been meaning to sort out a loan, a refinance, or learn what financing is available for your business, this is usually the easiest fortnight to do it.

No school run and no rush (thankfully).

Three ways to reach us:

☎️ Call 1800 733 000
📍 Come into the office, kids welcome
📅 Book a time that suits: calendly.com/int-fin/30min

We’ll work around you. Mornings, afternoons, whatever fits.

Your accountant and your lender want opposite things from the same set of numbers.Your accountant’s job is to make your ...
25/09/2026

Your accountant and your lender want opposite things from the same set of numbers.

Your accountant’s job is to make your taxable income as small as legally possible. Your lender’s job is to work out what you actually earn. Both of them are reading the same tax return and they’re looking for different answers in it.

That’s fine until you want to borrow.

It comes up every few weeks. A business doing solid turnover, owner working hard, real money coming through, and the borrowing capacity comes back at a fraction of what they expected. Nothing has gone wrong. The return has been prepared to minimise tax and it’s done exactly that.

Lenders assess off declared income. They’ll add some things back, and this is where people lose money without knowing it.

Depreciation usually gets added back. So does interest on debt being refinanced, and one-off expenses that clearly won’t recur. Additional superannuation contributions above the minimum will often be added back too.

What generally doesn’t get added back is the stuff people assume will. Wages paid to a spouse who doesn’t work in the business. Personal expenses run through the company. Motor vehicle costs where the vehicle is genuinely used. Those reduce your tax and they reduce your borrowing capacity by the same amount.

The timing is the part that hurts. Most lenders want the last two years of returns. So a decision your accountant made in March 2025 is still shaping what you can borrow in late 2026, and by the time you find out, it’s lodged.

None of this is a criticism of accountants. They’re doing precisely what they’re engaged to do, and for most business owners in most years, minimising tax is the right call by a wide margin.

But if there’s a purchase coming in the next two years, that changes the brief. That’s a conversation to have with your accountant before the return is lodged, not after.

If you’re planning something and want to know what your returns will actually support, send them through. Better to find out now than in the middle of a deal. 1800 733 000.

General information only, not personal or tax advice. Your accountant is the right person for your tax position.

I’ve been asked eleven times this week what the RBA’s going to do on Tuesday. I have no idea, and neither does anyone te...
24/09/2026

I’ve been asked eleven times this week what the RBA’s going to do on Tuesday. I have no idea, and neither does anyone telling you they do.

Last week we mentioned several lenders had already moved their fixed rates. That’s not a prediction either, but it does tell you where lenders are positioning.

Here’s what’s worth doing this week, and none of it depends on guessing the outcome.

👉 Ifyou’re mid-application, ask two questions. When does your approval expire, and is your rate set at approval or at settlement? Those answers vary by lender and most borrowers have never asked. If it’s set at settlement and you’re six weeks out, you’re carrying that risk without having agreed to.

👉 If you’ve got a fixed rate expiring in the next six months, start now. Not next month. The fixed rates available today are different to the ones available in August, and rolling onto a revert rate without a plan is the most expensive default setting in banking.

👉 If you’re bidding at auction, confirm your number is current. Assessment rates moved with each rise this year. An approval issued in autumn may not stretch as far as you think, and an auction purchase is unconditional.

👉 If you’re settling on a build or an off-the-plan purchase, check the valuation timing. That’s a bigger exposure right now than the rate itself.

👉 What I wouldn’t do is make a fixed versus variable decision on Tuesday night. That choice should come from how much certainty your household or business actually needs, not from a reaction to one meeting.

Deciding it under pressure in the 24 hours after an announcement is how people end up locked into something that doesn’t suit them.

Worst case, you check all this and everything’s fine. Best case, you find something that needed sorting while there was still time to sort it.

If you want anything on that list checked, send it through this week.

No cost, client or not. 1800 733 000.

General information only, not personal advice.

Fuel is where it is because of a war on the other side of the world, and no amount of complaining at the bowser changes ...
22/09/2026

Fuel is where it is because of a war on the other side of the world, and no amount of complaining at the bowser changes your P&L.

Diesel is running about 77 cents a litre above where it sat before February.

If you run vehicles, this goes beyond just an inconvenience and is rather a permanent change to your cost base until it isn’t.

Five things worth doing, and only one of them involves finance.

👉 Work out the actual number. Litres a month, times the increase. Most business owners feel the pain without ever quantifying it. Four utes doing 400 litres a month each is over $1,200 a month extra.

👉 Reprice the work. Quotes issued six months ago were priced on a different cost base. If you’re still honouring them, you’re absorbing the difference. Going forward, shorten your quote validity period.

👉 Consider a fuel levy on longer jobs. Common in transport and increasingly in trades.

👉 Check your fuel card terms. A card with 30 to 45 day payment terms gives you a genuine working capital float on a cost you’re paying daily. It doesn’t reduce the cost, but it changes when you pay it.

👉 Look at what you’re actually driving. If the fleet is old and thirsty, the fuel difference between old and newer vehicles at these prices is real money, and it’s the kind of thing that can make replacing a vehicle stack up when it wouldn’t have two years ago.

The thing I wouldn’t do is borrow to cover it. Fuel is an ongoing cost, and funding an ongoing cost with debt means you now have both the cost and the repayment.

Where finance does help is if fuel has eaten the buffer you were relying on for something else, like equipment or a tax bill. Restructuring what you’ve already got can free up monthly cash without adding to the total.

Happy to look at that with you if it’s relevant. 1800 733 000.

General information only, not personal advice.

Guarantor loans are one of the better tools we have for getting first home buyers in the door. They’re also the one wher...
18/09/2026

Guarantor loans are one of the better tools we have for getting first home buyers in the door. They’re also the one where parents most often sign without understanding what they’ve agreed to.

Quick version of what it is - Your child hasn’t saved a full 20% deposit.

Instead of them paying lenders mortgage insurance to cover the gap, you let the lender use part of your home as extra security. Their deposit shortfall gets covered by your equity. They buy years earlier and save the insurance premium.

Here’s the part that matters. You’re not promising to help if they get stuck, you’re actually putting a mortgage over a portion of your home to secure their debt.

What that means in practice.

> If they can’t pay, the lender comes to you. Not for a conversation. For the money. If you don’t have it, your property is the security.

> You’re liable whether or not you can afford it. The lender assesses your child’s ability to repay. It doesn’t assess whether you could cover the guarantee.

> It affects your own borrowing. If you want to refinance, buy an investment, downsize or release equity while the guarantee is in place, it counts against you.

> It doesn’t end when they’ve saved enough. It comes off when the loan is restructured to remove it, usually once the property has grown in value or the balance has come down far enough. That takes an application and it doesn’t happen automatically.

Relationships change. If your child buys with a partner and that relationship ends, your guarantee is still there.

None of this means don’t do it. Most guarantor loans run perfectly and they’ve put a lot of people into homes who’d otherwise still be saving.

Four things I’d want in place before anyone signs.

- A limited guarantee, capped at a specific dollar figure, not the whole loan

- Your own legal advice, from your solicitor, not your child’s

- An agreed plan for when the guarantee gets released and whose job it is to start that

- A straight conversation about what happens if they can’t pay, had now rather than later

If you’re thinking about it and want to understand what you’d be exposed to, call me and I’ll walk you through it!

(General info only)

Address

Suite 2/86 Henry Street
Penrith, NSW
2750

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+611800733000

Website

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