How Dr Matthew and his wife secured their dream home
The road to a family home with Avant Finance
By 2011, surgeon-in-training Matthew Read and his wife Linda had all but given up on raising their first child in a home they owned.
“I had to approach numerous banks and was basically being laughed out of the bank by the bank managers at the time,” says Dr Matthew.
The situation seemed hopeless with several banks telling him: “Come to us in 10 years’ time when you’re fully qualified, and then we’ll re-look at it.”
At the time, Dr Matthew was training under a vascular surgeon in Melbourne who suggested Dr Matthew and Linda speak to finance specialist, Penny McGregor. The Reads immediately felt that Penny understood them and she took up the challenge of securing their home finance and, to their amazement, she was successful.
With that major goal achieved, Dr Matthew threw himself into his training. After completing his general surgical fellowship in 2016, he was accepted by the Australian and New Zealand Gastro Oesophageal Surgery Association (ANZGOSA) for subspecialty training in upper gastrointestinal surgery. He also undertook a surgical oncology fellowship at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with a special focus on robotic surgery.
More recently, he completed a PhD that focused on developing preclinical models to better understand oesophageal cancer, winning international acclaim in the process. Now a practising Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeon, Dr Matthew pairs his work in private practice and at three Melbourne public hospitals with ongoing research and teaching duties at the University of Melbourne.
He and Linda have developed a close relationship with Penny, who is Avant Finance’s Head of Operations and has helped the family secure their dream home. They are keen to spread the word about Penny, much like Dr Matthew’s supervisor did a decade ago.
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