Being savvy about your home loan to get yourself a good deal is more important than ever with Real Estate booming across Australia. There are currently 10.3 million properties in Australia and nearly 60% of these have mortgages against them.
If you’re in the market for a home loan, it’s important to shop around – or even renegotiate your rate down.
Comparison sites are useful. MOZO calculated the rates for a $400,000 at an 80% loan-to-value ratio, covering owner and investor rates across different lenders.
The site have calculated the average variable home loan rate for owner occupiers as 3.22% and the average two-year fixed rate as 2.26%, as well as $1734 being the average initial monthly repayment on a $400,000 loan. The average new owner occupier lending amount is $512,655.
Really Simple Money put the exact same terms of 30 years, $400,000 loan into an NAB calculator that offered 3.67% as its best variable rate and it came up with $1834 monthly repayments. We then put the terms in using the best home loan rate from the MOZO table into the moneysmart calculator and it came up with $1476 per month – a saving of $358 a month or a handy $4,296 a year.
One of the most important takeaways is that home loans are at historical lows and it’s a great time to get into the market, especially when also considering some of the government programs that currently exist to help first time buyers get into the market.
The graph below is for fixed rate home loans and shows the juicy low they’re currently sitting at.
Cheapest home loans
Mozo have gathered the date for rates both for those looking to live in their new home and those looking to invest, as well as variable rates or fixed rates up to terms of five years.
One of the clearest take aways from the data is that there’s a lot of variation with which lenders come out on top for different types of loans, emphasising the importance of always finding a bank or other lender that fits your unique situation.
You can get more info on the stats here.
Owner Occupier variable rates
Owner Occupier Fixed rates 1 Year
Owner Occupier Fixed rates 2 Year
Owner Occupier Fixed rates 3 Year
Owner Occupier Fixed rates 4 Year
Owner Occupier Fixed rates 5 Year
Investor Variable rates
Investor Fixed rates 1 Year
Investor Fixed rates 2 Years
Investor Fixed rates 3 Years
Investor Fixed rates 4 Years
Investor Fixed rates 5 Years
Fixed v Variable rates
If you’re a bit newer to the property game and need to quickly brush up on fixed versus variable rates, these are the basics.
Fixed home loans means you’re given a fixed interest rate on your repayments, this rate will not change and breaking out of it will generally incur significant costs. They can be offered up to 10 years but fixed rates will generally be offered between one and five years.
A variable rate is the opposite and will change approximately in line with the Reserve Bank of Australia’s “cash rate.”
A fixed rate is safer if interest rates rise as your repayments won’t also creep up, however, if the interest rates go down and you have a fixed rate, then you’ll be paying above the odds for your home loan repayments.