NSW gives you five business days of cooling off at 0.25%. Victoria gives three clear business days at 0.2% or $100. Queensland gives five business days at up to 0.25% and lets you waive it in writing. The rules you know do not travel with you.
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A section 10.7 planning certificate discloses zoning, planning controls, land contamination, flooding and bushfire prone land — and it's already in the contract. Here's what to read in it, plus the free government sources that answer the questions it doesn't.
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In NSW, nothing is binding until contracts are exchanged — then you get five business days of cooling off, at a cost of 0.25% of the purchase price if you use it. Here's how to structure an offer, and what a 66W certificate actually gives away.
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A building report covers accessible parts of the property — and generally excludes wiring, plumbing, drainage, gasfitting and pools. NSW Fair Trading also warns a vendor-supplied report "is not a substitute for your own independent report". Here's how to read one properly.
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Pre-approval lasts three to six months and doesn't commit anyone to anything. At auction, where there's no cooling-off period, that gap between conditional and unconditional is where deposits get lost. What pre-approval actually covers.
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Lenders mortgage insurance protects the lender, not you — and it's usually added to your loan so you pay interest on it for thirty years. Here's how LMI, a family guarantee and simply waiting compare, and how to choose between them.
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A 0.65% rate saving on a $600,000 loan is about $243 a month — and pays back switching costs in under four months. The trap isn't the cost; it's the 30-year term reset that can add $139,000 of interest. Plus why the buffer traps some borrowers.
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Income caps are gone and places are uncapped on the 5% Deposit Scheme. Help to Buy is open for 40,000 households. Here's what each measure does, what it doesn't do, and why the serviceability buffer is now the real gate.
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Lenders assess you at three percentage points above the rate you'll actually pay, and from 1 February 2026 only 20% of a bank's new lending can sit at six times income or more. Here's how those two rules set your number — and why the answer differs by lender.
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Blanket pet bans are invalid, by-laws banning sustainability infrastructure are prohibited unless the building is heritage-listed, and a bill before NSW Parliament would give owners a right to install an EV charger. What by-laws can still do — and what they can't.
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