Early! I mean as soon as that idea pops into your head to think about wanting to buy I can help you know what steps you need to take. Two of the best assets you have in the home-buying process are time & knowledge. I am here to work with you on the journey.

In the insurance space - I only operate in the Personal Insurances space – so those insurances that cover you personally. Again, time is the best asset you have here, so the earlier the better.

The all important question huh? There isn’t one quick answer to this – it is all explained in detail in the document you will sign before we commit to working together & also we will talk about it in our first discussion. In most cases, the banks pay us a commission to take the lending to them & maintain the relationship with you. However, there are cases where we will take you to a lender who doesn’t pay a commission (this is probably about 2% of the overall lending we do at SCM) if this is the case we will have a full discussion with you about the costs involved before proceeding. With regards to the commission that the banks pay us, there are also clawback terms, with some of the lenders if you pay back funds within certain terms they will claw back the commission they pay us, which in turn means we may need to recover these costs from you. It’s an important reason to make sure we are your first point of contact if anything changes for you so we can discuss the best way forward.

It’s my role to make sure you not just get the best deal with your mortgage structure (interest rates, cash contributions etc) but also that the structure is going to work for your whanau situation now & into the future. It’s really important for us to have a great positive relationship as I want to help you for a long time - I joke with my clients I want a marriage, not a tinder date!

No matter what you are doing, I’ll work with you to understand your finances and goals - then look at providers who align with this for you - this is in both the lending & insurance space.