Receive $2,000 cashback^ when you refinance to a new Owner Occupied (Principal & Interest) or Investment home loan under the Advantage Package. $395 annual package fee and $250k minimum loan size applies. Excludes Portfolio Loans and refinances from within Westpac Group. Applications received by 31 March 2019 and loan settled by 31 May 2019
Why is this a good deal? No comparison of interest rates, application fees, valuation costs etc, and no mention of what you get for the $395 annual fee or what the conditions are to get the $2,000 cashback^.
No. Comparison rate should never be used, because:
- assuming the loan will be paid off for the contracted period e5/30 years;
- the variable rate is based on the current variable rate, for loan term.
$395 annual fee is pretty much the same as Bank West.
FWIW - I literally just jumped over to BoM after ten years with ANZ - the annual fee was exactly the same (ie $395) but for me they got a better interest rate (3.94% variable and 3.75% fixed). I know I could get even better rates elsewhere (in particular if you can arrange to get the trailback and/or can live without some of the features we wanted) but they enabled me to split the loan, get two offset accounts, and are refunding almost all (except for $100) of the establishment fees - including the first $395 annual fee, and that $2k bonus (it was running late last year and they have just extended it) should appear soon - and I now also have a 'personal banker' at our local bank who I can review rates etc with on a regular basis to ensure we're getting the best deal. Oh, and that $395 apparently also covers the ($279) annual fee for the Signature Amplify card I got to get bonus Qantas FF points.
Note that the new 'responsible lender' requirements mean even though we have about 75 percent equity in the house, and perfect credit history, and decent income that easily more than covers the monthly payments after expenses (we've always paid extra into the loan) we had to get an insane amount of information to them, including things like amount of annual leave and evidence of past 12 months payments for any loans, that I'd never had to provide in the past. When I went into Westpac to kill one of my old credit cards I wasn't using (so I could get physical evidence to BoM that I'd closed it) they offered to at least match and likely better the BoM deal including the bonus, so you can likely go into any of the Westpac/associated banks and get this.
From what I can see terrible comparison rates
Rates should be listed as part of the post