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Deposit loan company OwnHome has launched three cash prizes for brokers servicing first home buyers.
OwnHome – the lender specialising in deposit boost loans (a registered second mortgage that clients can use as their source of funds) – has launched a competition to find “Australia’s best first home buyer broker”.
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The competition – which opened for submissions on Monday (25 November) and runs until 17 February 2025 – offers three prizes, with a total prize pool of $30,000. They are:
Australia’s Best Broker for First Home Buyers: $20,000 prize
This award celebrates a broker who demonstrates exceptional expertise and dedication in assisting first home buyers and is able to evidence the number/volume of first home buyers they have helped.
Best Educator for First Home Buyers: $5,000 prize
This award celebrates an individual that empowers first home buyers through education and resources.
Best Customer Success Story: $5,000 prize
The award celebrates the best broker story of how they helped a first home buyer navigate their home ownership journey.
The submissions will be judged by:
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Dan White, the managing director of property group, Ray White.
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Angus Keatinge, the CEO of serviceability platform, Quickli.
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Sarah Moore, the head of workplace experience at fintech and aggregation group, Lendi.
The submissions will be based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures, such as the number of first home buyers supported, details of the education that they’ve provided first home buyers, and the impact they have had on their clients.
Announcing the competition, OwnHome’s co-CEO Tim Harley said: “As a lender specialising in low deposit loans, we are well aware of the unique challenges of achieving homeownership for first home buyers.
“We wanted to give back to the broker community, to recognise and reward those brokers who go above and beyond for their first home buyer clients.”
Speaking to The Adviser, Harley said that OwnHOme currently receives around 3,500 applications a month, with brokers being a dominant distribution channel.
“We are constantly going and speaking with brokers around the country to make sure that we’re meeting them where they are to help them understand OwnHome and, in particular, the right clients that we’re designed to support,” he said.
“But brokers who have never used OwnHome can absolutely win this prize. This isn’t a OwnHome’s best first home buyer broker award. This is Australia’s Best Broker for First Home Buyers.
“This competition is a way to elevate and shine a spotlight on those who are doing what we see as a really hard, really important job, which is helping families go from renting and the insecurities that that can bring, to owning their home. And so we thought it was really important to shine a spotlight on those brokers.”
Finalists will be announced in March with winners expected to be revealed in April 2025.
Who is OwnHome?
OwnHome, which received minority investment from Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) venture-scaling entity x15ventures, Square Peg, Hostplus – as well as others – in 2022 – specialises in low deposit home loans.
Its core market is higher-income earners who can service a mortgage, but do not have enough deposit saved to avoid paying lenders mortgage insurance. For example, a 20 per cent deposit on the median house is $258,706 and can take more than a decade to save.
Instead of traditional LMI, OwnHome charges a 2.2 per cent Low Deposit Premium and offers a complimentary property concierge service.
[Related: Finsure Group partners with non-bank deposit lender]
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