Acting for private mortgage investors is a large component of our practice. Our decades of experience in this field means we are the first choice for anyone serious about ensuring their legal due diligence and documentation is carried out thoroughly.
We can also assist you to navigate the treacherous waters of the private mortgage broker market. This is because we have made long standing assessments of the industry stalwarts and carefully monitor all newcomers. We are able to assess their integrity levels based on our exposure to them across multiple matters and multiple years.
We act for lenders only
Bransgroves acts exclusively for lenders. We never act for borrowers, so on every advance, variation, discharge and enforcement our client is the person whose money is at risk, and there is never a question of divided loyalty. Our private lending clients range from self-funded retirees lending their superannuation and family offices, to mortgage funds and AFSL holders; from a first mortgage for $500,000 to a syndicate funding a $30M construction facility.
Since the advent of PEXA we act on private mortgage advances Australia wide, with security documents registered in every state and territory.
What we do for a private lender
- Mortgage advances: lender and legal due diligence, certification of title and settlement, following our seven-step Advance Process.
- Mortgage documents: security documents drafted by Matthew Bransgrove and Marcus Young SC, co-authors of the LexisNexis textbook Essential Guide to Mortgage Law in Australia, and revised continually for the latest case law and statute law.
- Mortgage syndicates: structures and documentation technology that make a loan with twenty investors almost as efficient to write as a loan with one, with a bare trustee to act as lender of record.
- Mortgage variations and mortgage discharges through the life of the loan, including partial discharges and consents to second mortgages.
- Mortgage enforcement if the borrower defaults, following our thirteen-step Enforcement Process. There are over 155 Supreme Court decisions on AustLII in which we have acted for the lender.
- Mortgage funds: regulatory advice for brokers who want to grow from arranging private loans into raising funds from the public.
Working with brokers and funders
Much of our private lending work is referred by brokers and funders who introduce loans to their investors. Our Funder Pledge is a binding promise, fifteen years old and never broken, that we will never go around a referrer and act for their investor directly. It is why funders who would not otherwise refer to a law firm at all refer to us, and it is how Bransgroves became Australia’s leading firm for loan syndication work.
Loans we will not act on
Private credit is risk-priced, and risk-pricing is legitimate. We will not, however, document a loan that is priced, structured or timed to fail. Our policies on Predatory Lending, Elderly Borrowers, Mortgages over a Parent’s Home and Third Party Mortgages set out where we draw the line. A loan that ends with a court setting the security aside is a bad loan for the lender too, and we would rather tell you so at the term sheet than in the witness box.
How to start
Our fees for advances, variations, discharges and enforcements are published on our Fees page, and the steps of an advance from term sheet to discharge are set out in our Advance Process. For more information contact us today.