Home Loans & Mortgages

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?

Mortgage fees: The Australian Labor government is about to legislate against home loan exit fees. Is this good or bad news for new home buyers ? From July 2011 home loan exit fees will be banned if the Government can pass its legislation to abolish them. The purpose of banning mortgage exit fees [or deferred [...]

Its official. People don’t like big banks, and they love to hate the CBA The big four banks in my view are in a privileged position in the Australian Business World, almost cocooned and protected in law, but act as if they have made their own luck, and pay their top people accordingly. Shameful associations [...]

Westpac chief executive, Gail Kelly is not happy with Government plans to ensure that all Australians are free to move their mortgages, and has hit out at moves by the federal government to ban exit fees on home loans from July this year.
She claims that the forced abolition of the mortgage exit fees would in fact make it harder for smaller lenders to compete in the home loan market, without explaining why, and why she should care about Westpac’s competitors in the first place!