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MortgageSMART™by Emanate Finance
MortgageSMART™ tool
First Home Buyer Calculator
General information only — illustrative modelling, not credit assistance or an offer of finance. Actual outcomes depend on your circumstances, lender policy, rates and fees.
Price, deposit, costs, loan, repayment. In that order.
Almost every first home buyer starts with a price and a deposit percentage, then gets blindsided by the costs in the middle. Duty, conveyancing, inspections and lender fees all need cash at settlement, and they don't come out of the loan.
Work through the four steps below to see the total cash you'd need, the loan you'd end up with, and what the repayment looks like each week, fortnight or month — including if rates rose two per cent.
Free calculator · No personal details required · Does not impact your credit score
Your first purchase, step by step
Price, then deposit, then the costs, then the loan and the repayment. In that order, because that's the order the money leaves your account.
1
What are you looking to buy?
$650,000
2
How much deposit?
10% — $65,000
At 90% LVR, lenders mortgage insurance of about $10,530 would apply.
3
What would the repayments be?
5.94%
- Cash you need
- $93,690
- Loan amount
- $595,530
- Repayment each month
- $3,548
- If rates rose 2%
- $4,345
Deposit $65,000 plus about $28,690 of buying costs.
90% LVR, LMI included.
Principal and interest over 30 years.
Roughly the repayment lenders test you against.
Where the buying costs go
- Transfer duty (Western Australia)
- $24,890
- Conveyancing
- $1,800
- Building & pest inspections
- $700
- Government registration
- $500
- Lender fees
- $800
- Total
- $28,690
First home buyer duty concessions, grants and guarantee schemes aren't included and could reduce these figures considerably depending on your state, the property and the price.
Illustrative estimate based on the figures you entered. Actual outcomes may vary — the assumptions behind it are at the bottom of this page.
The sequence
How a first purchase actually runs
1. Know your capacity, not just your deposit. A lender's assessment of what you can repay usually sets your price ceiling, not your savings.
2. Get your position confirmed before you offer. Making offers on an unverified number is how buyers lose deposits and time.
3. Budget the costs separately from the deposit. Treat them as a second, non-negotiable pot of cash.
4. Structure the loan deliberately. Term, offset, splits and repayment frequency all get set once and then quietly run for decades.
Things worth deciding before you sign anything
How much buffer you keep. Emptying every account into the deposit leaves nothing for the first repair, and lenders often like to see savings retained.
Whether to capitalise LMI. Adding it to the loan preserves cash but you pay interest on it for the life of the loan.
Fixed, variable or split. Certainty against flexibility, and it doesn't have to be all one way.
The term you actually want. Thirty years is a default, not a requirement.
Next step
See what you could buy and what it would cost to hold.
Answer a few questions about your situation and we'll show you where you stand on capacity, deposit and the costs that catch first buyers out.
No documents · does not impact your credit score
Common questions
First home buyer questions we're asked most
What's the biggest surprise for first home buyers?
The cash costs that sit on top of the deposit. Transfer duty, conveyancing, inspections, registration and lender fees typically add thousands to tens of thousands, and generally can't be borrowed. Buyers who budget only for a deposit percentage often find they're short weeks before settlement.
Can I buy with a 5% deposit?
Many lenders will lend at 95% of the property value with lenders mortgage insurance added, subject to their policy and your serviceability. Some guarantee schemes and some professional packages allow small deposits without LMI. The constraint is usually capacity and cash for costs rather than the deposit percentage itself.
Should I get pre-approval before I start looking?
It's generally worth having a clear, current view of what a lender would approve before you make offers, so you're negotiating with real numbers. Pre-approvals do involve a credit enquiry and they expire, so timing matters — it's worth talking through the sequence rather than lodging one early and letting it lapse.
How do grants and schemes affect this?
They can reduce your duty, your deposit requirement or your LMI, depending on the scheme, your state, the property type and the price. They also change regularly and have their own caps and eligibility rules, so this calculator doesn't assume any of them. Confirm current terms with the relevant authority.
What repayment should I aim for?
One that still works if rates rise. A useful test is to model your repayment at a rate one to two per cent above today's, which is roughly what lenders do when they assess you. If that figure would break your budget, borrowing a little less is usually the better decision.
What clients say
148 Google reviews · rated 5.0
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