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Aside from the rate, how do you even pick a lender?
Bayley Clarke · Mortgage broker on the road · Last checked 11 November 2026 · 3 min read
The short answer
Rates are important, but more important than the rate is who's actually going to approve you. If you've got some dodgy credit or a bunch of debt, we may need a lender that's very supportive on borrowing capacity just to get the loan over the line.
So approval comes first and rate comes second. After that it's fees, the features you actually want, and what the lender is like to deal with day to day. There's no one right way to do it, but there's a right order.
The 90 second version, filmed from the driver's seat. The rest of this page is the detail underneath it.
First: who will approve you
Every lender has its own rules on income, debts, credit history, deposit and the type of property. Two lenders can look at the same person and one says yes while the other says no, or one lends you a lot more than the other. A sharp rate from a lender that won't approve you is worth nothing.
So the first filter is always which lenders will say yes to your situation, and which of those will lend you enough to buy what you're trying to buy. If your file is straightforward that's a long list. If you're self-employed, have a few marks on your credit or a lot of existing debt, the list gets shorter, and picking right matters more.
Then: rate and fees
Once we know who'll approve you, rate comes into it. That's the big one for most people because it drives the repayment every month. But look at fees alongside it, both the upfront ones and the ongoing ones like an annual package fee.
A package with an annual fee usually comes with offset accounts and a bigger rate discount than the basic no-fee loan. It's worth it if you'll actually use the offsets and the discount beats the fee. If you won't, the basic loan is probably the better deal.
Then: features and how it feels to bank there
Next is whether the lender has the features you're after. Offsets are the common one: some lenders give you one, some let you have several, which matters if you like splitting money into buckets. Redraw, extra repayments, splitting the loan between fixed and variable, all of that varies.
Then the day-to-day stuff: internet banking, the app, customer service and how easy they are to get hold of. Some people want a household name and that's fine. Some people want a lender with an ethical lens on where the money goes, and they exist too. None of that is wrong, it just comes after the approval.
The honest bit: the cheapest isn't always the best fit
The lender with the lowest advertised rate may not approve you, may lend you less, or may not have the feature you were counting on. Picking on rate alone is how people end up reapplying somewhere else three weeks later.
That's the bit I do. I look at who'll approve you first, then line up rate, fees and features against what you actually want, and tell you straight which one I'd pick and why. I don't care which bank we end up with.
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