Often paired with.
Moved, settled, sorted. A cinch.
Moving house is a sequencing problem as much as a borrowing one: sell first, buy first, or bridge. We model all three with real Victorian stamp duty, which on a $900,000 home is $49,070 with no owner-occupier concession, work out what you can borrow after the lender's 3-point buffer, and negotiate the loan across 90+ lenders so the rate and the structure both fit the move after this one.
Victorian stamp duty bands for an owner-occupier who is not a first home buyer, and the lending rules around them.
Figures checked October 2026 against the sources shown. Rules change; we re-check before every application.
Sell first if you cannot carry two loans and need certainty on your budget. Buy first if the home you want is rare and you can bridge. Most Melbourne upgraders end up somewhere in between: a long settlement on the sale, a short one on the purchase, and a bridging facility as the safety net.
Selling first means renting or living with family between homes, but you bid with a known number. Buying first means knowing you have the house, but your sale price is still a guess and the lender assesses you on the worst case. We model your numbers under both so the decision is about your life, not just the loan.
The lender adds your existing loan, the new purchase price, costs and the interest that accrues during the bridge into one "peak debt", usually capped around 80 per cent of the combined value. When your old home sells, the proceeds reduce it to an "end debt" that you must be able to service as a normal loan. Interest on the bridging portion is usually capitalised rather than paid monthly.
The two things lenders care about are the end debt, not the peak, and the time limit, typically six months for an established home and up to twelve if you are building. Banks price the bridge at or above their standard variable rate; specialist lenders offer bridging without full income documents when the sale will clear the debt, at a higher rate again. A realistic sale price is the whole game, so we get an agent's appraisal in writing before anyone applies.
As an owner-occupier who is not a first home buyer, $2,870 plus 6 per cent of the value over $130,000 up to $960,000, then a flat 5.5 per cent up to $2 million. That is $49,070 on $900,000 and $66,000 on $1.2 million. The owner-occupier concession only applies up to $550,000, so most Melbourne upgraders pay the general rate.
Two exceptions worth knowing. Buying an apartment or townhouse off the plan in a strata development before 21 April 2027 lets you deduct the construction cost incurred after you sign, with no price cap. And pensioner and concession-card holders get the first home buyer thresholds once. Everything else is cash at settlement, and lenders will not fund it, so it belongs in the deposit maths.
Offset if you might ever turn this home into an investment or want your savings kept separate; redraw if you want the simplest loan with the lowest rate. Both reduce interest daily. The difference is legal: offset money stays yours, redraw money becomes the bank's until you take it back, which can cost you tax deductibility later.
Upgraders who keep the old home as a rental are the classic case. If you paid extra into the old loan and redraw it to buy the new one, the ATO treats the redraw as new borrowing for a private purpose, and the interest on it is not deductible. An offset would have kept the original loan intact. We structure for the move you might make in five years, not just this one.
Lenders test the new loan plus any loan you are keeping at the rate plus 3 percentage points, after living expenses, and most will go to 80 per cent of value without LMI or 95 per cent with it. Equity in your current home can fund the deposit and the stamp duty, so the cash you need up front is often smaller than people expect.
Where the numbers are tight, the lever is usually the loan you are keeping: refinancing it at the same time, or converting it to interest-only if it becomes a rental, can add six figures to what the new home can be. We run the whole position, not one loan at a time.
“Our services do not stop once a lending agreement has been signed.”Suvidh Arora, 2022
The Cinch five steps, with the sale, the purchase and the bridge planned as one transaction.
Appraisal on your current home, borrowing power on the new one, and a written plan for sell-first, buy-first or bridge.
Pre-approval on the new loan, bridging approved if needed, so you can bid at auction knowing the limit.
Sale and purchase settlements lined up, bridge cleared, offset and redraw set up for the next move.
Straight answers. If yours isn't here, ask cinchi (bottom right) or book a chat.
Moved, settled, sorted. A cinch.
I'm cinchi, Cinch Loans' AI assistant. I explain how Australian home loans and finance work, and when a question needs a current figure I check trusted sources like MoneySmart, Housing Australia, the RBA and the state revenue offices, and show you where it came from. Suvidh and the team give the actual advice. Your questions are saved so they can pick up where we left off, and when a question needs a person, I'll put you straight through on WhatsApp.
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cinchi is an AI assistant. It can be wrong. Figures are quoted from the source shown and change over time. Nothing here is personal credit advice or an offer of credit. Credit Guide · Privacy · Talk to Suvidh