Daniel
Perkins
Buying a home to live in, growing your investment portfolio, or lending to buy or grow your business. Whatever stage you’re at, I’m here to help.
Who you’re dealing with
About Daniel.
I genuinely enjoy working with people and being part of their property journey. From first home buyers through to complex builds and long-term investors, the part I take pride in is helping people make confident decisions about what is usually one of the biggest financial steps of their lives.
I work across residential, investment and the more complicated scenarios, with a strong focus on structure and long-term flexibility. That means taking the time to understand your circumstances properly, explaining the options clearly, and walking you through the process without unnecessary stress or jargon.
I stay hands-on the whole way through and I’m happy to help at any stage, not just the parts with paperwork attached. I’d rather build something long-term than do a one-off transaction, which in practice means being easy to get hold of, there to assist you along the way, and honest and in your corner throughout the process.
What I work on
The lending I do, in plain terms.
Home loans.
A loan to buy the place you’re going to live in. The part people expect to matter is the interest rate. The part that actually decides whether you get the house is how much a particular lender will let you borrow — and that number moves around a lot more than the rate does.
Two lenders looking at exactly the same payslips can land tens of thousands apart, because they treat overtime, bonuses, casual income, HECS and your everyday spending differently. So the first job isn’t shopping for a rate. It’s working out which lenders say the biggest number for you, and then comparing rates among the ones that will actually do the deal.
The other thing worth knowing early is what your deposit does. Under twenty per cent you’re usually into Lenders Mortgage Insurance, which protects the bank and not you, and can be a real cost. There are schemes and lender policies that change that for some people. Whether any apply to you depends on your circumstances, and it’s a five-minute conversation rather than something to guess at.
Investment property loans.
Same mechanics as a home loan, different maths, and a much bigger consequence if the structure is wrong.
Lenders will count some of the expected rent as income, but not all of it — they discount it, and how much they discount varies. They’ll also assess your existing home loan at a rate well above what you’re actually paying. That combination is why people are often surprised in both directions: sometimes they can borrow far more than they expected, sometimes far less.
Where I spend most of my time on these is structure. If your investment loan is tangled up with the loan on your own home, using the same properties as security, you can find that selling one or pulling equity out of the other becomes a much bigger job than it needed to be. Keeping things separate usually costs nothing at the start and saves a lot later. It’s also worth having your accountant in the conversation early, because how the loan is set up affects what’s deductible, and that isn’t something I can advise on.
Commercial mortgages.
A loan against a shop, warehouse, office, shed or anything else that isn’t somewhere someone lives. It looks like a home loan and behaves nothing like one.
Expect a bigger deposit — commercial lenders generally lend a lower percentage of the property’s value than residential ones do. Expect shorter terms, so the facility comes up for renewal every few years rather than sitting untouched for thirty. And expect the rate to be quoted to you specifically rather than advertised, because commercial lending is priced deal by deal based on how the bank reads the risk.
The biggest thing people don’t see coming is that the tenant matters as much as the building. A property with a strong tenant on a long lease is a different proposition to the same building sitting empty, and the valuation will reflect that. If you’re buying to occupy it yourself, that’s a different conversation again. Either way, bring me the lease and the contract early — that’s where the answer lives.
Buying or growing a business.
Buying a business, buying into one, or funding an expansion. This is the one where people most often go to their own bank first, get a soft no, and assume that’s the answer.
The thing to understand is what a lender is actually lending against. If the business comes with property, that changes everything, because there’s real security behind the loan. If it doesn’t — if what you’re buying is goodwill, a customer list and some equipment — most lenders get a lot more cautious, and the ones that will do it are not always the ones you’d think of. Your own home is often what makes the deal possible, which is a decision worth thinking properly about rather than signing on the spot.
What makes these work is preparation. The seller’s financials, a clear explanation of why the business earns what it earns, what changes under your ownership, and what you’re bringing to it. Lenders are not really assessing the business in the abstract — they’re assessing whether it keeps performing with you running it. Being able to answer that properly, in writing, before anyone asks, is most of the job.
Before you ring
A few things worth saying.
Ringing me doesn’t touch your credit file.
Working out what you can borrow and comparing lenders involves no credit check. That only happens when we lodge a real application, once you’ve chosen a lender and we’re confident about the outcome.
For most residential lending, I cost you nothing.
The lender pays a commission when the loan settles. It doesn’t come out of your loan and it doesn’t change your rate. Some commercial and business lending works differently — if a fee applies to your deal I’ll tell you what it is before you commit to anything.
Early is better than ready.
The most useful conversation is the one before you’ve found the property or signed the contract, because that’s when things can still be changed. Nobody has ever rung me too early. Plenty have rung me a fortnight too late.
If it’s not my area, I’ll say so.
Anything agricultural goes to Dallas, who does that and nothing else. If it’s messy and commercial, Dylan is usually the right call. You’re not being handed around a call centre — there are four of us and we’d rather you got the right one.
Tell me what you’re trying to do.
Rough numbers are fine and you don’t need to have decided anything yet. Ring me, or send it through and I’ll come back to you.