Renovation loans in Cairns. Stay in the suburb you love, and make the house match it.

Stay or Move

Why are Cairns homeowners renovating instead of moving?

Because the cost of moving now buys a lot of renovation. Refinancing to renovate puts that money into the home you already own instead of into a transaction.

If you have run the numbers on selling and buying again this year, you already know how the sums look. Stamp duty, agent fees, conveyancing and moving costs on a typical move run somewhere between $80,000 and $150,000 before you have changed a single thing about the new place. In Queensland, stamp duty alone on a $1.2 million purchase sits around $52,000. That is a new kitchen, a bathroom and a decent chunk of an extension, spent instead on a transaction.

You are not imagining the shift. Australian renovation spending reached $56.2 billion in 2025–26, accounting for 37% of all housing spending, while knock-down rebuilds fell sharply. Research from the University of Sydney found each standard rate rise cuts home purchases by around 5% almost immediately. When borrowing power shrinks and the cost of transacting stays high, staying and improving stops being a compromise. It becomes the rational call.

That is exactly what renovation refinancing is for. We restructure your existing loan, unlock the equity you have already built, and put a funding plan around the work so the renovation is affordable on the repayments you will actually have, not the ones you had two years ago.

How It Works

How does refinancing to renovate work?

You borrow against the equity you have already built, by refinancing or topping up your loan, and the money is released as a lump sum, a split account or in stages against builder invoices. There are three ways to fund renovation work, and the right one depends on the size of the job and how your builder wants to be paid.

A standard refinance with a cash-out. If the work is cosmetic or modest, a new kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, painting, we refinance your loan to a better structure and release equity as a lump sum or a split account you draw on as invoices arrive. You keep your offset and redraw habits intact, and you are not paying interest on money sitting unused.

A construction-style renovation loan. For structural work, extensions and anything staged, lenders prefer a progressive drawdown. Funds are released against builder invoices as each stage is certified, so you only pay interest on what has actually been drawn. This is the structure that protects you if a project runs long, and it is the one most people have never been shown by their bank.

A line of credit or equity split. Useful when the scope is still being quoted and you want funds available without committing the full amount on day one. We will tell you plainly when this costs more than it is worth.

Whichever path fits, the sequence is the same. We assess your usable equity against a realistic renovation budget, not a hopeful one. We compare products across 40+ lenders, including those that handle self-employed and low doc income properly. We structure the loan so your repayments stay manageable if rates move again, with an offset where it helps and a split if part of the debt should be fixed. Then we manage the paperwork through to settlement, and we review it afterwards. A renovation changes your property's value, which changes your equity, which changes what you should be doing with the loan six months later. Most brokers disappear at that point. We do not.

What It Costs You

What does a renovation loan cost?

Our service costs you nothing. You pay the loan's interest and any lender fees, and we disclose those in writing before you commit.

Our service is paid by the lender when your loan settles, not by you. There is no fee for the consultation, the comparison or the application. If a lender charges valuation, establishment or settlement fees, we tell you before you commit, in writing, so there are no surprises at the end.

What to bring to your first conversation