Finder’s Home Loan Awards have called out the best home loan offerings on the market for several years. This year, Finder looked at interest rate and fee data across 12 awards categories to find the best overall home loan provider.

Taking out this new award for 2024, and featured on Channel 7’s Sunrise was Easy Street Financial Services, an online division of Community First Bank since 2004.

As an online lender, Easy Street is in a great position to offer market-leading interest rates and great service. We know that Australian borrowers often end up paying more when they stick to a big bank or their existing provider.

Cost of the loan

In assessing products for Finder’s Home Loan Awards, Finder’s insights team looked at 12 months’ worth of interest rates. In another year of rising rates, it was important to see which lenders remained competitive.

While Finder found that some lenders were better at offering lower rates for certain borrower types, Easy Street was consistent across the board: that’s how it ended up as the overall provider for 2024.

The cost of a loan isn’t just down to the interest rate, though. While Easy Street does charge a $500 application fee, it doesn’t charge any additional fees over the life of the loan. The application fee didn’t change the result because Easy Street performed well enough with its interest rates that that fee didn’t matter when it came to Provider of the Year.

It’s always worth doing the calculations because sometimes paying a little extra for an application fee saves you more over the longer term.

Loan features

Another aspect of home loans which Finder looked at was the presence of an offset account. Usually a feature of variable rate home loans, it was omitted from the criteria for fixed rate loan awards. Knowing it to be a crucial feature of home loans, saving borrowers money on the interest they’re paying, it was included in the methodology for the overall provider of the year.

Easy Street offers a 100% offset account for its variable loans at no additional cost to your loan. It also allows you to have 2 separate offset accounts so you can really keep track of where your money is.

In fact, even with a fixed rate home loan Easy Street gives you an offset account. That’s more savings for everyone.

Features Finder would have awarded if they could

Of course, the awards boil things down to low costs and an offset account. But Easy Street offers other great features that weren’t part of the methodology.

For instance, you can make extra repayments towards your loan. You can either use this to repay your loan faster or you can redraw from those extra funds if you need the cash.

For first home buyers you can borrow up to 95% of the property value with lender’s mortgage insurance (LMI).

Unlike other lenders which offer different rates for owner occupiers and investors, Easy Street keeps it simple. You’ll get the same interest rate no matter whether you’re an owner occupier or investor (A different rate applies for interest only repayments). It simply depends on whether you take out a fixed or variable rate and whether you choose principal-and-interest or interest-only repayments.

If you’re looking for a low-cost, effective home loan which saves you money while working for you, Easy Street is worth considering.

About Easy Street

Easy Street is a division of the member-owned Community First Bank and has been in operation since 2004. Based in Sydney NSW, Easy Street has no branches or stores– their advanced suite of products and services are only available online and over the phone, which means they can be responsive and flexible. Plus, those savings are passed on to you in the form of better rates and fairer fees.

Author bio

Rebecca Pike is the senior writer for home loans at Finder. She has been writing about the mortgage market in Australia for almost 6 years and regularly appears on TV, radio and in newspapers providing commentary on Finder’s insights and research.