Bluestone Mortgages is a mortgage lender owned by private equity partners and two British banks
Bluestone Mortgages
March 8th, 2010
Bluestone Mortgages is a mortgage lender owned by private equity partners and two British banks, Barclays and Bank of Scotland International. It has two main products, equity release and home purchase.
Bluestone itself is an investment house that is aimed at the “mass affluent” investor. It started in Australia but has now expanded to New Zealand and has recently opened offices in Europe.
Equity release is aimed at older home owners who want to use the capital in their house in order either to supplement their pension or to pay for luxuries such as holidays. The house will revert to the mortgage holder, Bluestone, when the owners of the house die. The house is then sold and any excess over the mortgage is then distributed to the heirs. Bluestone was the first non-bank financial institution to enter the reverse mortgage and equity release markets.
The residential mortgages come as either fixed rate or variable rate, but unlike many other lenders they also offer the option to split the mortgage between fixed rate and variable elements. This split allows a home buyer to decide to take some risk, rather than the all or nothing decision which most lenders insist on when they offer the choice of either a fixed or variable interest rate. The fixed rate for both split and fully fixed rates will only last for three years and the borrower will then revert to the variable rate.
Another product in their residential mortgage range is the line of credit. The line of credit is a loan that is guaranteed against a residential property. It doesn’t need to be taken out all at one time, and when it is not taken out there is no interest charged.
Both the variable rate residential mortgage and the line of credit can be accessed through the Bluestone card. This card is a MasterCard debit card which can function in ATMs and can be used for EFTPOS transactions. As it has the MasterCard logo it can be used internationally at around 29 million locations worldwide. The variable rate mortgages and the lines of credit also have the ability to withdraw money against them at a later stage.
Both the variable rate mortgages and the line of credit also allow redraw facilities for overpayments that have been made in the past. There is a fee of $50 to use this facility, and it is only open to borrowers who have their mortgage account up to date.
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