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While purchasing a property can prove tricky for time-poor legal professionals, this pair delved into the importance of being prepared and discussed how a specialist may be able to help.
As interest rates come down and the property market becomes potentially affected, Christian Goodall and Mitchell Lobb, co-founders and directors of Distinctive Finance, emphasised the importance of lawyers having their finances in order when looking to buy property and advised engaging a debt advisor to do the “heavy lifting”.
Speaking on a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, produced in partnership with Distinctive Finance, the pair discussed ongoing interest rate cuts, what these might mean for lawyers looking to enter the property market and the value of engaging a debt adviser.
In May, the Reserve Bank cut rates for the second time since November 2020. After cutting the cash rate by 25 basis points at its February 2025 meeting, the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia decided to hold the cash rate at 4.10 per cent in its second cash rate decision in April.
As such, there are a number of key steps lawyers should be taking if they’re looking to purchase a home, according to Goodall.
“[Lawyers] should have an interim profit and loss prepared, supported by three BAS statements. And if that run rate is significantly better than last year, the relationships that we’ve built up with some of our lenders will allow us to look at some of that income in isolation and give them more capacity,” he said.
“So being prepared in relation to your financials, profit and loss BAS statements, ensuring your tax is up to date, they’re the critical things.”
Tidying up credit limits, as well as cancelling any “buy now, pay later” subscriptions, is also important when looking to buy, as is engaging a specialist debt adviser, Lobb added.
“Using a trusted debt advisor such as ourselves, we want to put you in the best light with the lenders. Preparing your application, before it even gets to the lender, is very important,” he said.
“We used to look in the past in terms of the five C’s of credit, you look at the character of the person, the history of repayments, all that sort of stuff. And so having those conversations with us upfront is very important so we can guide those stories with the lenders.”
Particularly for busy legal professionals, having help means that they can be prepared at all stages of the journey to purchase a property.
“[Lawyers are] open to help, but they’re very transactional. So, when something’s on the go and the transaction needs to be done, they’ll drop everything and focus on it and then you get their full attention. But let’s just say they were going to an auction and they needed a pre-approval. They went to that auction and they missed that particular property,” Goodall said.
“Once that property’s gone, they’ll let it slide again. So, I’m often called the friendly pest. I absolutely stay on top of things. And one thing that we offer is too, as a brokerage, because we understand the profession, if they’re called into cases and hearings and things, and we’ll meet before, after hours, we’ll meet on weekends.”
There are also numerous consequences for lawyers who don’t act proactively, with Lobb emphasising that practitioners could be missing out on good rates by not prioritising properly.
“Part of our service is providing periodic reviews around your financial situation to make sure that the rates that you’re on are the best in the market. So that’s important. Especially from a personal perspective, it’s not your area of expertise. I think reaching out to a specialist, again just gives you a bit more peace of mind that it can be solved and there’s someone there to help you along the way,” he said.
“Don’t be daunted by it because we’re here to do the heavy lifting, take the weight off your shoulders. And I think if you do that little bit of homework, we then create that story for the lenders and the path forward for you from a financial perspective. So let us do the heavy lifting.”
To listen to the full episode with Christian Goodall and Mitchell Lobb, click here.
Lauren is a journalist at Lawyers Weekly and graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from Macleay College. Prior to joining Lawyers Weekly, she worked as a trade journalist for media and travel industry publications and Travel Weekly. Originally born in England, Lauren enjoys trying new bars and restaurants, attending music festivals and travelling. She is also a keen snowboarder and pre-pandemic, spent a season living in a French ski resort.
