Sydney - A 92-year-old Australian woman has become the nation's oldest first-time home buyer after securing a housing loan she does not have to pay off for another 30 years.
Her local financial institution is banking on the mother-of-five living to 122 under the terms of the loan.
Margaret Cole, who grew up in a poor coal-mining town in Wales, Britain, decided concerns among the nation's traditionally risk-averse banks about her age would not stop her embracing the "great Australian dream" of home ownership.
"She has been a battler all her life and was not taking no for an answer," James Hunt, her real estate agent at First National Wyong, said on Monday.
She also bagged a R38 500 grant from the government for first-time home buyers, an incentive normally aimed at the young.
Cole, who emigrated to Australia in 1976, has had a little help from her daughter and brother-in-law, whose names are also on the ANZ Bank mortgage as co-guarantors.
She plans to move into her three-bedroom home at Watanobbi, a suburb north of Sydney on the New South Wales central coast, later this week.