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