Erik Ung - Prime Group Lending

Erik Ung - Prime Group Lending Erik Ung, Mortgage Broker based in Sydney, servicing clients in Australia.

Most first home buyers start by looking at properties. The ones who move fastest start here instead.Four things to do be...
10/08/2026

Most first home buyers start by looking at properties. The ones who move fastest start here instead.

Four things to do before you inspect a single property:

1. Know your borrowing capacity. An assessment takes 30 minutes and gives you a real budget to work with.
2. Check your credit file. Defaults, missed payments or errors can affect your approval. Better to know before your lender does.
3. Understand your deposit options. Genuine savings, gifted funds, guarantors and government schemes all have different rules.
4. Get pre-approved. It puts you in a position to move when you find the right property.

The sequence matters. Doing these in order avoids the situation where you find the right place and can't move on it.

Book a consultation to get started.

Your borrowing capacity isn't just about income. Four things reduce it that most people don't factor in.1. Credit card l...
03/08/2026

Your borrowing capacity isn't just about income. Four things reduce it that most people don't factor in.

1. Credit card limits, not balances. A $20,000 limit reduces your capacity even if you've never used it. Lenders assess the limit as potential debt.

2. Buy Now Pay Later accounts. BNPL facilities are treated as liabilities. Close what you're not using before you apply.

3. HECS debt. Assessed as an ongoing monthly commitment, not a one-off sum. Higher balances have a real impact on the loan amount available to you.

4. Dependants. Each additional dependant affects assessed living expenses, which lowers the amount a lender will approve.

Knowing this before you apply gives you time to clean things up. Speak with a mortgage broker to understand your actual position.

Your lender assessed you at 9.5% when your actual rate is 6.5%. This isn't a mistake. It's a rule every lender in Austra...
27/07/2026

Your lender assessed you at 9.5% when your actual rate is 6.5%. This isn't a mistake. It's a rule every lender in Australia is required to follow.
APRA requires all lenders to assess your loan application at your actual interest rate plus a 3% serviceability buffer. On a 6.5% loan, that means your borrowing capacity is calculated as if you were paying 9.5%.
The buffer exists to make sure you could still afford your repayments if rates rose by 3 percentage points from where they are today. It's a genuine safeguard against overcommitting in a low-rate environment. The tradeoff is that it directly caps how much anyone can borrow, regardless of how comfortable the actual repayment feels right now.
Here's the part most people miss. The buffer moves with the cash rate. Every time the RBA cuts by 0.25%, your assessment rate drops by 0.25% too. On a typical loan, that increases borrowing capacity by $10,000 to $15,000.
If you were assessed 12 months ago, your assessment rate today is lower than it was then and your borrowing capacity has gone up, even if your actual rate hasn't changed by the full amount yet.
Most people never get reassessed after a rate cut. They're still searching based on a number that's now out of date.
If you want to know your current assessment rate and what it means for your borrowing capacity, DM .

Rentvesting versus buying where you live is one of the most common conversations I have. Most people want a definitive a...
20/07/2026

Rentvesting versus buying where you live is one of the most common conversations I have. Most people want a definitive answer. The honest one is that neither path is universally right.

Rentvesting makes sense when where you want to live and where you can build wealth are different markets, your tax rate makes investment loan deductibility worth more than the PPOR CGT exemption at your price point, or your life is still in motion and flexibility has real value.

Buying where you live makes sense when you are genuinely settled for 7 or more years, the suburb has real growth fundamentals, and the CGT exemption on your home is a meaningful part of how you build wealth over time.

Four questions that usually settle it: Can you afford to buy where you want to live and have it make financial sense? Are you settled for at least 7 years? Is your marginal tax rate above 37%? Does the suburb you want to live in have stronger fundamentals than other markets at your price point?

Answer those honestly and the path usually becomes obvious. Send a DM to if you want to run your situation through this.

Saving a bigger deposit before buying sounds like the responsible move. In some situations it is. In others, the two to ...
17/07/2026

Saving a bigger deposit before buying sounds like the responsible move. In some situations it is. In others, the two to three years it takes to get from 10% to 20% costs far more than the LMI you were trying to avoid.

LMI on a $750,000 purchase at 90% LVR is roughly $14,000. If that same property grows at 8% per year over two years, the missed capital growth is more than $120,000. The rate difference between an 80% and 90% LVR product is typically 0.10% to 0.30% — meaningful, but not the whole story.

In a flat market, waiting makes sense. In a rising market with strong fundamentals, LMI is sometimes the price of not being priced out. It is not always a penalty. Sometimes it is a calculated cost of entry.

If you want to run the numbers on your situation, send a DM to .

An investment loan application is assessed differently to a standard home loan. Here's what actually gets looked at.Rent...
13/07/2026

An investment loan application is assessed differently to a standard home loan. Here's what actually gets looked at.

Rental income is typically shaded to 70-80% by most lenders. The full rent doesn't count toward your borrowing capacity.

Every property you hold gets assessed, including your own home. Total debt across your portfolio and the LVR on each property all factor into serviceability.

Loan structure matters more than most people realise. Whether you borrow in personal name, company or trust affects which lenders are available, what rates you can access, and your tax position going forward.

Getting this right before you purchase protects your ability to keep building the portfolio. DM us if you're planning your next purchase.

Cross-collateralisation is usually sold as a convenience. One lender, one conversation, everything in one place.The prob...
10/07/2026

Cross-collateralisation is usually sold as a convenience. One lender, one conversation, everything in one place.

The problem is it is convenient for the bank, not for you.

When multiple properties are tied together as security, the bank controls the entire structure. You cannot sell one without their approval across the rest. If one property drops in value, they can demand equity from the others. And if you ever want to refinance, you are negotiating all of them at once, which removes most of your leverage.

The right structure keeps each property secured independently. If things go wrong on one, it stays contained. If you want to sell or refinance one, you can, without asking permission on the whole portfolio.

If your loans are currently cross-collateralised, it is worth a conversation before you add the next property. Send a DM to and I will look at your structure.

Being told your serviceability is maxed is not the end of the conversation. It is the start of a different one.Every len...
06/07/2026

Being told your serviceability is maxed is not the end of the conversation. It is the start of a different one.

Every lender runs a different model. The same income, same liabilities, and same rental income can produce a $240,000 gap in borrowing capacity depending on which lender's calculator is applied. Rental income shading alone varies from 70% to 100% across the market. The floor rate used to stress-test existing debt varies by product type and lender. How credit card limits are assessed varies too. A no from one calculator is one lender's version of the ceiling, not the market's.

Beyond lender selection, the structure of what is already sitting against your name matters more than most people realise. A $30,000 credit card limit you have never touched is assessed as if it is fully drawn, at a high notional rate, reducing your borrowing capacity by $150,000 or more. Closing it before application costs nothing. Switching existing investment loans from P&I to interest-only lowers the assessed repayment figure on that debt, which directly frees up room for the new loan in the serviceability calculation.

In most cases where I see a client told they are maxed, the issue is not income. It is liabilities that have not been reviewed, a loan structure that has not been optimised, or an application that went to the wrong lender first.

If you have been told your serviceability is done, send a DM to . I will run your position across multiple lenders and tell you what the real number looks like.

Refinancing every two years gets repeated as financial wisdom. It is not always wrong. But the cases where the maths doe...
03/07/2026

Refinancing every two years gets repeated as financial wisdom. It is not always wrong. But the cases where the maths does not hold tend to get left out of the conversation.

The costs most people forget: discharge fee from your current lender, establishment and valuation fees at the new one, legal costs at settlement, and mortgage registration depending on your state. On a $750,000 loan with a 0.25% rate saving, the monthly saving is around $156. At $2,000 in switching costs, you are at break-even around month 13. Move again before then and you have lost ground, not gained it.

That is before LMI enters the picture. If your equity has dropped below 20% since you bought, refinancing can trigger another LMI premium ranging from $8,000 to $25,000 or more on an investment loan. A rate saving of 0.25% on a $750,000 balance takes roughly 5 to 13 years to recover a $25,000 LMI cost. The rate is not the number that matters. The net saving after all costs is.

Before you move lenders, call the one you are with. A competing offer in hand often produces a rate match with zero fees and no paperwork. It takes one conversation and it works more often than most borrowers expect.

If you want me to run the break-even on your current loan, send a DM to .

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Level 1, 44 Martin Place
Sydney, NSW
2000

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