Is your home loan affected by recent changes?

The up coming budget looks to be an interesting one with housing affordability tipped to be a big focus. Time will tell whether there will be new grants introduced for first home buyers, or the talk of super being able to be part of the deposit for first home owners. Both will have it's downfalls in my opinion and I hope whatever the outcome we don't end up creating a first home owner bubble!

What have the banks been doing?

You may have seen a fair bit of movement on the banks side in recent times under pressure from APRA to make changes to investment lending. Those mainly affected are

- Investors with investment purposed variable Principle and interest home loans (Rates likely to have increased)
- Investors with investment purposed Interested Only home loans (Increased)
- Owner occupied home loans with interest only repayments (possibly increased)

Now more than ever it is crucial to check your home loan interest rate and product. You can easily do this if you have online banking and navigate to the loan details tab. (Happy to walk you through this if you want to send me an email or call me direct)

If you had an investment loan in the past and recently moved into your home (therefore changed the purpose) then please contact me immediately to see if we can renegotiate your loan product, you could be savings hundreds if not thousands by switching to the correct product!

If you are an investor and have been hit with higher variable rates because your loan is interest only, I suggest considering switching to principle and interest repayments or looking at fixed interest rates. Feel free to contact me to discuss and I will run you through the process of doing so depending on your lender.

As always, I am here to help. So if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to give me a call.