Mortgage broker for Ashburton

Buying in Ashburton

Ashburton is a servicing town for one of the most productive farming districts in the country, and that shapes the lending as much as the property market does. Entry prices are well below Christchurch, which puts a standalone home within reach for a lot of first home buyers much earlier. The complication is usually not the house. It is how the income is earned.

Self-employed and farming income

A large share of Mid Canterbury borrowers are self employed, contracting, or drawing income from a farming operation. Banks are built around a salaried applicant with two years in the same job, and that is not how income works here. Expect to be asked for around two years of financial accounts, confirmation from your accountant, and IRD income summaries.

Lenders differ enormously in how they read those accounts. Some will add back depreciation and one-off expenses, others will not. Some average two years, others take the lower. The same set of accounts can produce materially different borrowing figures depending on which bank sees them, which is precisely the situation a broker is useful in. Where the main banks will not fit, there are non-bank lenders who take a more considered view, and we will tell you honestly whether that is a sensible short term step or not worth the extra cost.

Lifestyle blocks

Plenty of Ashburton purchases come with land attached. Lifestyle lending has its own rules: most lenders cap the area they will treat as residential, they look closely at whether the property generates income, and the deposit is often higher than for a standard house. It is very doable. Picking the right lender first matters more than it does on an ordinary purchase.

Where we are

Our office is at 3/24 Dublin Street in Christchurch, and most of our Mid Canterbury clients deal with us entirely by phone and email. The advice and the process are exactly the same, and there is no fee to you on home and investment lending.

Journey Mortgages holds a 5.0 rating from 60 Google reviews and Alex Toohey is a Top 25 New Zealand Mortgage Adviser. If a bank has already said no, a 15 minute conversation will tell you whether that was the market talking or just that one bank.