Settlement is the final step in the home loan process: it’s when the seller receives their payment for the property, and when your Tic:Toc home loan begins.
Or if you’re refinancing, it’s when your existing lender gets paid out for your original home loan (by us), and when your new Tic:Toc home loan begins.
We’re about to loan you a lot of money, so we need to make sure that you are you.
Our preferred partner for Verification of Identity (VOI) is ZipID. You can book your appointment on the ZipID website – just use the 6 digit code in your loan contract so they know it’s for Tic:Toc and you don’t have to pay. You can book an appointment and advise the agent to meet you at your preferred location – usually at home or work.
The ID check itself will only take around five minutes but you book a two hour window with ZipID. They’re available from 7:30am to 6pm on weekdays and 8am to 12:30pm on Saturdays, and are available in metro and suburban NSW, SA, WA, VIC, QLD and ACT.
Then there’s Australia Post’s VOI service that we use for customers outside ZipID service areas. There’s info on this option in your loan document pack, but you’ll need to go into an Australia Post office and pay $49 and then send us the receipt and your bank details so we can reimburse you.
We only lend for established houses, so this excludes lending for construction, land and off-the-plan. Most First Home Owner Grants are only available for construction.
Unfortunately, where a FHOG is available for an established build, we can’t consider it as part of your deposit amount. So, while you’ll be able to get the cash, it won’t be considered towards your deposit in your Tic:Toc home loan application.
If you believe you are eligible for the First Home Owners Grant you will need to apply for the grant separate to your Tic:Toc Home Loan and, if approved, you will need to confirm with your conveyancer or solicitor that the funds will be made available at settlement.
We have options. How you choose to manage your Tic:Toc home loan repayments is kinda up to you.
If you decide to have an offset account, your repayments will be automatically deducted from there. You can nominate your own third-party bank account to make automatic deductions from (there’s a form in your loan document pack to do this). Or you can manually transfer money to make your repayments, but keep in mind it can take 1-3 business days for the repayment to be completely processed.
It’s different depending on whether you’re purchasing a property or refinancing your existing place.
When you’re purchasing, settlement depends on the vendors, conveyancers and you. But generally, you negotiate the settlement date with the seller when you’re making your purchase offer – which is often anything between 30 and 90 days. Our solicitor / conveyancer will try their best to meet that date.
If you’re refinancing, the settlement date really depends on when both banks have everything they need to transfer the loan. This is generally worked out by our solicitor / conveyancer and your current bank’s settlement department. It can take up to 4 – 6 weeks.
Trust us, we’d love to completely eliminate paper from the entire home loan process. But because we’re governed by legislation, we still need your actual physical signature (“wet signature”) on the docs.
For the time being, you need to mail the documents to our solicitors / conveyancers.
You want to add one of our home loan offset accounts? Who can blame you, they’re pretty great – your offset balance 100% offsets your home loan balance. And if you decide you don’t want an offset account anymore, that’s up to you.
If you decide to add or remove an offset before settlement it’s OK. You just need to send us an email confirming the change. If you’ve already received your loan contract we’ll need to email you a new one to show this change.
It’s a little trickier if your home loan has already settled. You can still add or remove an offset account but there will be a variation fee. Contact our post-settlement team on 1300 842 405 or email myloan@tictochomeloans,com and we’ll sort it out for you.
If you’re able to pay off your loan earlier than expected because of a windfall or smart saving (yay!) or you’re moving to another lender (boo!), there is a $325 discharge fee to be paid.
And if you exit or change a fixed rate loan during the fixed period, there is also a break fee to be paid – this doesn’t apply to variable rate loans. The break fee amount varies based on your own loan times and amounts.
Your first home loan repayment is due exactly one month after your loan settles. So if your loan settles on 1 May, your first repayment is due on 1 June.
Even if you’ve elected to pay your loan off weekly or fortnightly, you just need to have paid what would’ve been the monthly repayment by the end of the month – we don’t mind how you split it.
I need more help
Your conveyancer or solicitor is the best person to answer your settlement related questions. After all, that’s what you’re paying them for.
Diem Tran