The things business owners look up that nobody explains properly
Where a number is. What a word on a title means. What an ATO arrangement actually does and does not do. These pages answer the question first and completely, before they mention lending at all — because a guide that spends four paragraphs advertising before it tells you where your director ID is has wasted your time.
Before you borrow
The questions people ask in the week before they apply anywhere.
- How much money you need to start a business — sizing the costs, and the buffer nobody budgets
- Do you qualify for a business loan — the four tests, and where the answer is no
- Do you need financials — which lenders need them and which do not
- How long a business loan takes — realistic timeframes by lender type
- Secured versus unsecured — including what a personal guarantee really means
- Business loans with no credit check — the honest answer
- Australia's cash flow lenders compared — what each one requires, and what security it takes
- Australia's second mortgage lenders compared — smallest loan, LVR ceiling, valuation and where each takes security
- Check your borrowing power — whether the property will carry the loan you need, and what moves the limit
- The loan calculator — put the property in and see what it supports as a first mortgage, a second, or a caveat loan
Numbers and registrations
The identifiers a business is asked for and can never find when it needs them.
- How to find your director ID — the 15-digit number, where it lives, and who must have one
- How to find your ABN or ACN — and the difference between them and a TFN
- How to find your company's TFN — why there is no public lookup
- How to find your ATO payment reference number — and why you have several
- What happens if your ABN is cancelled — and how to get it back
Property and lending terms
The words on a loan document, explained without the sales pitch.
- What is a caveat on a property — what it stops, and the three ways it comes off
- What a caveat loan is, and what it is not — why two lenders can use the phrase and mean different instruments
- What is LVR — the calculation, worked examples, and why the ceiling moves
- How to get your council rates notice — and why the value on it is not market value
- How to get a mortgage payout figure — and why it is not your loan balance
Buying, selling and risk
Due diligence, in both directions.
When a notice arrives
A letter with a date on it, and what the date actually means.
- A director penalty notice — what the 21 days mean, and what lifts the penalty
- Behind on commercial rent — what the lease lets a landlord do about the locks
- A default notice on the mortgage — and why the 30 days may not be yours
- Served with a statutory demand — when the 21 days start, and what day 22 costs
- Can the ATO take money from my bank account — garnishee notices, and what lifts them
- A personal guarantee called in — the cap, and what a bank must do first
- The ATO rejected or cancelled a payment plan — and the letter that comes first
- A payment claim under security of payment legislation — the reply window, and what missing it forfeits
- A warrant to seize property — who actually holds it, what is protected, and what stops it
- If you cannot settle on time — default interest, a notice to complete, and what becomes of the deposit
- A winding up application has been filed — which date on the paperwork is the one that matters, and what can still stop an order being made
- A default judgment against the company — it records that a deadline passed, not that a court decided the debt was owed
- When a supplier stops supplying — retention of title, what the credit application you signed actually contains, and what sits on the PPSR
When the bank pulls out, or the record follows you
Situations that are not about how the business is trading, and are constantly mistaken for it.
- The overdraft was withdrawn without notice — why an on-demand facility works that way, and what the Code still requires
- The bank will not refinance and the facility is due — what an expiry or review date is, and the notice the bank owes before it declines to extend
- A letter threatening receivers — three different documents, only one of which is an appointment, and where the 30 days comes from
- A receiver has been appointed — what the receiver controls, what the directors keep, and what is lodged with ASIC in the first seven days
- Borrowing after a bankruptcy has ended — the two clocks, and which one stops at discharge
Dealing with the ATO and insolvency
The arrangements, the arithmetic, and what each one does not do.
- How to set up an ATO payment plan — the thresholds, and why most plans fail
- Small business restructuring — who qualifies, and when it beats borrowing
- When tax returns have not been lodged
- When a payment plan has already defaulted
- What a Director Penalty Notice means, and the 21 days
- Why you owe the ATO money — reading the integrated client account, and the five things that put the number there
- Help with an ATO debt — what release, remission, waiver and write-off each mean when the taxpayer is a company
- ATO hardship for a business — the test that applies to people and not to companies, and the one concrete thing engaging buys
- A personal loan to pay a business tax debt — how the purpose test decides which loan you are really asking for
- Borrowing with an ATO judgment — what the Tax Office can do next, and whether a judgment belongs on a credit file
When the answer was no
A decline is a policy outcome. These say whose policy it was, what it was reading, and what is still open.
- Declined for a business loan — what the lender was actually rejecting on, and what is still open keyed on what you have
- What a cash flow lender's decline means — whether anyone has to tell you why, and what the application left on your file
- Defaults on the credit file — the notices that must come before a listing, and why paying does not remove it for five years
- Working capital when the credit file is the problem — the three things a lender can read, and the public register of who pays late
- A start-up loan with bad credit — why a new company is not a clean slate, and when to borrow in an established business's name
- Seasonal or irregular cash flow — why a lumpy account reads as a decline, and how to show the whole cycle rather than assert it
- A second mortgage with bad credit — why the lender holding the first will not lend more, and what the consent question really turns on
- Bad credit caveat loans — what a caveat lender checks, in the order it gets checked, and the one credit event that reaches the title
The cash flow loan you already have
Two products that are quick to take on and hard to describe afterwards.
Because the searches a business owner makes on the way to needing money are mostly not about money. They are about a form, a deadline, a document or a letter. If we are useful at that point, we have earned the conversation that may come later — and if we are not, no amount of advertising at the end of the page will fix it.
When the larger problem is the one you actually have: we lend against equity in real property for business purposes, with no financials, no valuation and no payments for the first six months. 1300 93 83 87, Mon–Fri, 8:30am – 5:30pm Melbourne time.
That's the HomeSec Advantage.
See if you qualify in sixty seconds
Three short questions, no credit check to apply and no financial statements. A Lending Manager reads it and calls you back with a real answer — not a call centre, not an algorithm.
That's the HomeSec Advantage.
Reviewed by Paul Stone, Joint Chief Executive