Home Loans & Mortgages

When the RBA lifted interest rates in November last year I said at the time that it was one rate rise too many. The RBA was at the time focused more on getting Interest rates to “normal levels”, when we are not in normal times Since then many people have agreed with me, including members [...]

That brings up a few questions for the Prime Minister.

So Julia Gillard, how will you sort out this mess? In particular….
How will you overturn the ability of the banks to bleed the “hard-working families” white and take most of their pay packets through high margins?
How do you plan on stopping the coming wave of foreclosures and the homelessness of hard-working Australians?
How will you keep the non and bank mortgage sectors apart and return then to a truly competitive picture to reduce interest rates.
How will you ensure that a new raft of mortgage players can easily enter the mortgage market to drive down interest rates?
If the HSCB bank in the UK can provide mortgages on a margin of 0.49%pa why do our banks need a margin over six times that amount?
When will Labor stop encouraging in anti-competitive behaviour?
How will you break the Big Four Bank Cartel?

The Reserve Bank is ready to pull the trigger on interest rates. Inflation is getting a bit on the high side and unemployment looks like falling even lower, so the RBA will feel compelled to raise rates. However if the CBA and other baks follow suit, then they will have done the RBA’s job, and official rates could remain as they are for now.

If you can get a better loan interest rate just by asking, what does that tell you about the bank? Its ripping all their clients off! So why would you continue to do business with them at all? As an analogy, if you discovered your baker was taking a slice out of every loaf he sold you for the last two years, would you be happy if he just said he would stop robbing you from now on? No. So why does this logic not apply to home loans?

With most mortgage interest rate crystal gazers, Mr Mortgage included, expecting the RBA to increase the cash rate by 0.5% this this year, it might be tempting to think about fixed interest rate.

The two things against this are that we have seen base rates rise by nearly 2% since the GFC, and that was the time to fix. The other reason this might be a bad idea is that the RBA talks about rate rises a lot more than it actually raises the cash rate.
The motives for raising interest rates are skimpy.