Funding Australian business since 2004
HomeSec Business Finance has funded Australian businesses since 2004, lending its own money against real property rather than broking files to a third-party funder. That has continued through two recessions, a mining downturn, a pandemic and a construction shakeout, with the same people running credit since 2005 and one office in Melbourne answering every call.
Private lenders come and go. That is not a criticism of the industry, it is a description of it — the barrier to entry is capital and a website, and when credit tightens or a fund’s mandate changes, the lender that was going to settle your loan on Friday stops answering the phone on Thursday.
We have been doing this since 2004. What follows is why that matters to someone deciding whether to send us a file, rather than a company timeline nobody asked for.
We lend our own money
Most businesses calling themselves private lenders are intermediaries. They take your application, assess it, and then place it with a fund, a panel or a high-net-worth backer who makes the actual decision. That is a legitimate model and plenty of good operators use it. It has one consequence you should understand before you rely on a timeline: the person you are speaking to cannot say yes.
HomeSec funds from its own balance sheet. When a Lending Manager here tells you on the first call that your file works, there is no funder to check with afterwards and no committee meeting on Tuesday. That is the difference between an indicative answer and an answer.
It is also why our term is open. A lender drawing on a fund has a mandate telling it when capital must come back. We do not, so if your settlement moves a fortnight, we move with it — no extension fee, usually one phone call.
The same people have run credit since 2005
Catriona Anderson has signed off credit decisions here since 2005. Jason Brockmuller has run the second-mortgage and bridging books since 2008. That continuity is not sentiment; it is the reason a file with an unusual shape gets looked at properly instead of being declined by a policy nobody can explain.
A regional commercial property with a tenant on a short lease, a director’s home with a caveat already on title, a builder whose accountant is eighteen months behind — those are files that need someone who has seen the pattern before. A credit team assembled last year has not.
What we lent through
Continuity in lending is only interesting if it spans something. Ours spans:
- The global financial crisis, when most non-bank lending in Australia stopped entirely and a great many private lenders closed.
- The mining downturn, which took regional Queensland and Western Australian property values with it and taught us a great deal about security outside the capitals.
- COVID, when the banks pulled back and business owners with perfectly good equity could not get an answer from anyone.
- The construction shakeout, which is still working through and which is why a large share of what we write is progress-claim and retention timing.
We are not claiming we got every file right. We are saying we were open, which is more than a lot of this market can say.
What good service actually means here
Not a scripted greeting. Three specific things:
You get an answer on the first call. Not a callback, not a portal confirmation — a real Lending Manager telling you whether the deal works, based on the property, the equity and the exit.
We tell you when the answer is no. This product solves a timing problem, not a solvency problem. If a business is losing money structurally, borrowing at private rates against the family home makes the eventual outcome worse. We decline files on that basis regularly, and we would rather do it in the first ten minutes than after you have paid for something.
We answer the phone. Nine local numbers, one credit team, and the person who picks up will tell you where they are sitting rather than pretending to be down the road from you.
Reviewed by Catriona Anderson, General Manager