Surveys are showing that as individuals, mortgage holders like me are more pessimistic than the experts about how many interest rate rises we are going to have to pay out for in the next year or so. I guess those of us who are the ones who’ll have to dig deeper in our pockets are more likely to be concerned about this, and it translates into statistics stating that consumers believe there will be at least three rises in interest rates in the next twelve months. Continue Reading »

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. Continue 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. Continue 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. Continue 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. Continue 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”. Continue Reading »