The questions we are actually asked

From $20,000 to $5,000,000, secured against Australian real property. We lend to 80% of value on residential security and 70% on commercial, counting what is already owed against the property. Vacant land is assessed case by case at a lower ceiling.

Settlement on a clean file is 24 hours, and 24 – 72 hours is the honest range. The parts that take longest are usually not ours: an agent has to appraise the property, and your own lawyer has to be available to witness your signature. If a deadline is already running, say so on the first call.

A rates notice for the security property, three months of recent statements for the mortgage over it, and photo ID showing your home address. That is the file. We do not ask for financial statements, tax returns, BAS, cash flow records or a trading history — not at application, and not before settlement either.

No. We instruct a real estate agent local to the property to prepare a market appraisal on our behalf. An appraisal comes back the same day where a sworn valuation takes days to book and days to write, and for lending against equity you already hold it answers the same question.

Not automatically. Defaults, arrears, judgments and an outstanding tax debt are things a person reads in context rather than reasons a file is rejected on sight — a business that is behind because a debtor did not pay is a different file from one that is behind because it is failing. What we do need is real equity and a credible way the loan gets repaid.

Both are secured against property you already own. A caveat is lodged on the title without the first mortgagee's consent, which removes the one step in a second-mortgage settlement that nobody can control and that routinely takes longer than the time you have. A second mortgage is registered and does need that consent. Which one suits depends on the timeline and the security.

Open. There is no minimum term and no maximum, no fee to extend and no penalty for repaying early. That matters more than it sounds: most funding of this kind is written to a fixed date, so when a settlement or a refinance moves — and they do — the borrower is the one paying for it.

Interest for the first 6 months can be prepaid and capitalised into the loan, so there are no repayments to make during that period. Your Letter of Offer sets out exactly how your loan is structured.

We do not publish a rate, because private lending is priced per file and any advertised number is one almost nobody gets. The variables that move it, and every fee that exists in this market, are set out on our costs page — including the ones other lenders do not name. Your own numbers are in your Letter of Offer before you commit to anything.

Not where the security is a caveat. That is usually the difference between funding this week and funding next month, because a consent request sits in a queue at an institution with no reason to hurry. A registered second mortgage does require the first mortgagee's consent.

Any genuine business or commercial investment purpose — paying a tax debt, covering a settlement shortfall, buying stock or equipment, paying overdue creditors, buying out a partner, or bridging a refinance that has stalled. What we cannot fund is a personal or domestic purpose.

Business-purpose credit is not regulated under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (the NCCP Act), and the protections available to consumer borrowers do not apply.

Every application is read by a Lending Manager and every credit decision is signed off by a person. We do not use artificial intelligence to assess, approve, decline or price a loan. An algorithm cannot see why the last two years look the way they do. A person can, and that is the whole reason files we write are ones a scorecard would have rejected.

The lender. HomeSec funds its own loans with its own money, which is why an answer can come from the person you are speaking to rather than from a credit committee somewhere else. We have been doing it since 2004.

Tell us early. The term is open, so a settlement that moves by three weeks is a conversation rather than a default, and it costs you nothing to extend. The files that go wrong are almost never the ones where somebody rang to say the date had shifted.