There are two big items in the mortgage news this week: for those of us already in the mortgage market, I’m looking at whether or not we can afford to pay higher interest rates, and if you’re someone who’s waiting to buy their first property and are trying to get a mortgage, there’s news about more home loan applications getting knocked back..... Keep Reading »

Phew. We’ve survived another start of the month Reserve Bank meeting without having to reach into our pockets and hand over more hard earned cash to the bank in the form of higher interest payments. The Reserve Bank met on Tuesday and decided, as many experts had tipped they would, to keep the cash rate at the same level for this month, and possibly another two or three months. And that’s good news for anyone with a mortgage or those of you looking to jump into a home loan in the near future..... Keep Reading »

Want to have a mortage that lasts forever? Believe it or not, that’s the enticement being used by a particular bank at the moment: sign up for your “everlasting mortgage”. That doesn’t sound very enticing to me, but when you look into the product then it could be something that suits you – if you’re aware of the catches..... Keep Reading »

When you first take out a home loan, whether it’s for your own home or as an investment, you start off with the expectation that you’ll be able to make repayments relatively easily – whether that’s from your salary or from rental income. Nobody deliberately (I hope!) takes on a mortgage that they’re going to have trouble repaying. But then interest rates rise – like they’ve done pretty regularly here in the last year – and it’s a little scary how quickly you can get out of your depth and start to have problems making your repayments..... Keep Reading »

It’s been a big news week for finances, with the economic crisis in Greece making the world markets nervous, and within Australia, with a federal budget being announced. But will all this have much impact on our mortgages? In the first case, the answer seems to be “hopefully not”, and in the latter, the answer is more like “unfortunately not”..... Keep Reading »

Looks like my gut feeling last week was right: the Reserve Bank did indeed decide to raise the official cash rate by 25 basis points. That makes it the sixth rise in less than a year, so let’s hope it’s the last one for a while. .... Keep Reading »

All too soon, it’s almost that time of the month again: the monthly meeting of the Reserve Bank of Australia where a bunch of people vote on whether or not to raise the official cash rate or not. They’ve done it often enough lately, with five rate rises in less than a year – admittedly from a point where rates where tantalisingly low, but still. Every rise means we have to dig a bit deeper in our pockets to make our monthly mortgage repayments and that still hurts..... Keep Reading »

Rising interest rates don’t just mean that the people with the mortgages and home loans have to pay more. Sometimes I forget that an interest rate rise has a flow on effect; it’s likely to start leading to rises in rental costs as well..... Keep Reading »

It’s happened again. This week when I logged on to my bank account – I spent last week in limbo from the daily newspapers, in hospital having a baby (a fact which explains why this blog was quiet!) – that all-too familiar message appeared. Yes, the interest rate on my mortgage account had been raised again, and I am going to have to pay more this month in my repayment. .... Keep Reading »

Over the past few months a major topic on this blog has been about interest rates rising: remember, the Reserve Bank increased the official cash rate earlier this month as well as in November and December last year, with predictions that there could be several more increases over the course of the rest of 2010. And as you’d expect, banks and other lenders generally followed suit, with some major banks raising rates by even more than the Reserve Bank did..... Keep Reading »

Over the last few years, more and more Australians have been signing up for mortgages equal to 100 per cent – and sometimes even more, up to 110 per cent – of the value of the house or investment property they are buying. And while that was a huge advantage for people who had trouble saving a deposit, it’s also a big risk, both for the banks and the mortgage holder themselves – if something goes wrong and they need to sell the property, it’s certainly not always the case that the sale price will pay off the debt, even in times of a housing boom..... Keep Reading »

If you’re in the market for a new house at the moment, you may have noticed that prices just keep rising, in pretty much every part of Australia. And unfortunately that’s not just a problem for first home buyers like I mentioned a few weeks back. With a 13.6 per cent rise in the average price of a house last year, even the Reserve Bank is warning that housing prices could continue to rise, and that’s not good news if you’re looking to buy..... Keep Reading »

Having a mortgage is cool. Or it must be, because the trends show that we Australians are much more in love with mortgages than we were two decades ago. Reserve Bank statistics on mortgage debts, which they only began to record in 1990, show that our thirst for mortgages has been increasing at a rapid pace. Who would’ve thought that this thing we complain about so often is actually something we can’t get enough of?.... Keep Reading »

This time round, sadly, the Reserve Bank hasn’t surprised us: at this morning’s March meeting the powers that be announced that they would be raising the official cash rate by 25 points to 4.0 per cent, effective from tomorrow. After the surprise announcement in February that the cash rate wouldn’t rise – despite pretty much everyone in Australia being certain it would – the Reserve Bank has continued with the expected trend of having several rate rises during this year and now we’re going to have to start paying a bit more on our mortgages..... Keep Reading »

If you’re not a member of the Australian mortgage (chain) gang yet, a study released this week might be bad news for you. According to the quarterly Housing Industry Association-Commonwealth Bank first home buyer affordability index study which was just published, affordability for buying a house (and the accompanying mortgage) in Australia has got worse again, and first home buyers might really struggle to break into the market. The statistics are quite shocking: the December quarter shows a fall of 18.4 per cent in affordability of housing for first home buyers, a huge drop especially when seen next to the annual fall of 22.3 per cent..... Keep Reading »