Keira O’Connell

Keira O’Connell is a mortgage and home-buying explainer who helps first-time buyers avoid expensive confusion. Born in Cork and now based in Sydney, Keira began as a loan processor and later became an educator at a member-owned credit union, where she ran workshops that demystified preapprovals, rate locks, and closing timelines. After watching brilliant people lose money to preventable mistakes, she made it her job to write the guide she wished everyone had on day one.Keira’s work walks readers through the entire journey: credit prep with realistic timelines, down-payment strategies, comparing fixed vs. variable structures, reading a Loan Estimate line by line, and building a post-closing budget that includes the “boring” but crucial bits—maintenance, insurance, and sinking funds. She’s allergic to hype and writes in checklists and screenshots, with sidebars on negotiation scripts and red flags that warrant a second opinion.She also covers refinancing, portability, and how to choose brokers and solicitors without getting upsold on noise. Away from housing talk, Keira surfs early, drinks her coffee too strong, and keeps a spreadsheet of Sydney bakeries she’s determined to try—purely for research, of course.