Moving House · 10 August 2026
A bridge is a loan priced on a sale that has not happened yet. Two numbers you supply, the price and the timing, end up doing most of the work.
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Bridging finance is a short term loan that lets you settle on a new home before your existing one has sold. ANZ describes it as a short term, interest only loan, also known as a tideover loan (Source: ANZ). Sorted describes a bridging loan simply as a temporary way of paying for a new house while the existing one sits on the market (Source: Sorted). The bridge sits on top of your current mortgage, both loans run at once, and the bridge is cleared from the sale proceeds when the old property settles.
That is where nearly every explanation of bridging finance stops, and it is the least useful part. The mechanics are simple. What makes a bridge work or hurt is that the lender is being repaid from a sale that has not happened yet, at a price nobody has agreed to, on a date nobody has set. Every meaningful cost in the arrangement flows from those two unknowns, and both of them are estimates you supplied.
The first question a lender asks is whether the exit is certain. The answer splits bridging into two products that are treated very differently.
| Closed bridging | Open bridging | |
|---|---|---|
| Your position | Sale is unconditional with a settlement date. | Property is still on the market, or the sale is conditional. |
| What the lender sees | A known amount arriving on a known day. | An estimated amount arriving at an unknown time. |
| How it is assessed | The more straightforward of the two, with a defined end date. | Stricter criteria, more equity expected, not offered by every lender. |
| Cost | Priced above a standard home loan, for a short and known period. | Generally higher again, over a period nobody can put a date on. |
The practical consequence is that going unconditional on your sale can change your borrowing position more than anything else you do in the process. The same household, the same properties and the same numbers can be assessed for a different product, on different terms, purely because the exit became certain. In our experience at Trebla, this is the single most common surprise for people who assumed the deposit was the hard part.
Most bridging articles lead with equity, and equity does matter. Lenders want a meaningful buffer across both properties once the bridge is in place, and the threshold varies by lender and by whether the bridging is open or closed. It is rarely the thing that stops an application.
The gate is peak debt. That is the combined balance of your existing mortgage, the new mortgage and the bridge, all outstanding at the same time. The lender tests whether your income can service that combined figure, and it does that test at its own assessment rate rather than the rate you would actually pay, along with the loan to value and debt to income settings in force at the time (Source: RBNZ). A household with substantial equity and a modest income can fail here comfortably, which is counterintuitive when the equity is sitting right there on the page.
If you want to see how a servicing assessment is built before you get near a bridge, we set out the three ceilings every application runs into in how much can I borrow in NZ, and our LVR and DTI calculator shows where a combined position sits against the current settings.
Bridging terms are short, usually set in months rather than years, with the maximum varying by lender. The number that catches people out is not the limit. It is what the clock is measured against.
The bridge runs until your existing property settles. It does not end when you accept an offer, and it does not end when the sale goes unconditional. A typical New Zealand sale has a conditional period for finance, a builder's report and any other conditions, followed by a settlement period after that. Both of those sit inside the bridging term. So a seller who budgets for the sale taking six weeks, meaning six weeks to find a buyer, is often looking at a bridge that runs considerably longer once the conditional and settlement periods are added on the back.
That gap between the estimate and the reality is the main driver of what a bridge costs, because the rate applies to a large combined balance for every week it runs. REINZ publishes median days to sell by region and by month, which is a more honest starting point for the marketing period than an appraisal conversation, and the conditional and settlement periods are then added to it (Source: REINZ). Our home buying process guide walks through where each of those stages sits.
Bridging is sold as a temporary arrangement, and the interest genuinely is temporary. One consequence is not.
The size of the bridge is set by what your existing home is expected to fetch. If it sells for less than that estimate, the shortfall does not disappear when the bridge is repaid. It is added to what you still owe on the new property, and it stays there for the remaining life of that mortgage. A timing problem that was meant to last a few months has quietly become a permanent change to your debt level, and it is invisible in the arrangement until the day the sale settles.
This is the risk worth sitting with before anything is signed, and it explains why lenders are cautious about open bridging in particular. It also explains a pattern worth naming: the longer a property sits unsold while a bridge runs, the more pressure there is to accept a lower offer, and lower offers are exactly what creates the shortfall. The two risks feed each other.
None of that makes bridging a bad product. It is often the right answer where the alternative is losing a home you have found, and where the exit is genuinely certain. It does mean the sale estimate deserves as much scrutiny as the loan, because it is the number the whole arrangement rests on.
Bridging is one answer to buying and selling out of sequence. It is worth knowing what the others are, because they cost less and carry different risks.
Negotiating a longer settlement date buys time to sell without borrowing anything. It costs nothing beyond whatever you concede in the negotiation, and it is the first thing to test.
An offer conditional on selling your existing property removes the risk entirely. It also makes your offer weaker, and it is rarely workable at auction.
Selling before buying removes the guesswork about price and timing, at the cost of moving twice or renting in between. It is the cheapest route and the least convenient one.
Depending on your equity and servicing, releasing funds against your existing property may cover a deposit without a bridge. Our guide to refinancing a mortgage in NZ covers what a restructure involves.
Which of these is realistic depends on the market you are selling into, the terms of the purchase, and how a lender assesses your combined position. Because bridging is not offered on identical terms across the market, and some lenders take a firmer view of open bridging than others, this is a situation where seeing several lenders' positions at once matters. We compare the two routes in using a mortgage broker versus going direct to a bank.
Trebla Partners Limited (FSP728251) is a licensed Financial Advice Provider based at 105a Allum Street, Kohimarama, Auckland. If you are weighing a purchase before your current home has sold, you can book a free chat with one of our Financial Advisers at book.trebla.nz/book and we will work through what the timing and the numbers look like in your situation.
Bridging finance is a short term loan that covers the gap between settling on a new home and settling the sale of your existing one. ANZ describes it as a short term, interest only loan, also known as a tideover loan (Source: ANZ). It is repaid from the proceeds when your existing property settles, and it sits on top of your existing mortgage until then.
Not always, but it changes the product. Closed bridging applies where your sale is already unconditional with a settlement date, so the lender can see the repayment coming. Open bridging applies where the property is still on the market and the exit date is unknown. Open bridging is assessed more strictly, generally costs more, and is not offered by every lender.
Bridging terms are short, commonly set in months rather than years, and the limit varies by lender. The point most people miss is what the clock is measured against. It runs until the sale of your existing home settles, not until you accept an offer, so any conditional period and the settlement period sit inside the bridging term as well.
Interest keeps accruing on the bridging loan and the lender will want to know how the exit is being managed. Options depend entirely on the lender and your position, and can include extending the term, adjusting the marketing strategy, or refinancing the balance into a longer term loan if servicing allows. This is why lenders test whether you can carry the combined debt rather than relying on the sale alone.
Generally yes. Bridging is short term, it is repaid from a sale that has not happened yet, and it is usually priced above standard home loan rates, with structures and fees that differ by lender. Because the term is short, the total cost is driven less by the rate than by how many weeks the loan runs and how large the combined balance is while it does.
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This article is general in nature and is not financial advice. Lending criteria, lender policies, and relevant rules vary and change regularly. Always seek advice specific to your situation before making decisions. Read our disclosure statement →
