There are a staggering amount of Aussies that are looking at one way in particular to battle the cost of living but alarm bells are still sounding.
A whopping 2370 Aussies are refinancing their mortgage every working day as interest rates have seen homeowners hit with 10 painful consecutive hikes.
In a battle to tackle the rising cost of inflation, interest rates have risen from a record low of 0.1 per cent to 3.6 per cent since May last year.
This has seen the fastest tightening cycle in a generation – despite the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) boss saying hikes would not start until 2024.
Yet 70 per cent of bank customers have made the move to refinance with another lender after their fixed rate expired in the past six month, analysis from the Australian Banking Association (ABA) found.
More than 800,000 record-low fix-rate mortgages that were taken out during the Covid pandemic are set to end this year, worth a staggering $379 billion, and homeowners are feeling “extremely stressed” about the thousands of dollars more they face in repayments. But the ABA has revealed that intense competition is battering the $2 trillion home loan market and homeowners are hunting down the best deal.
From the almost 309,000 mortgages refinanced over the last six months, data provided by banks to ABA showed close to 215,000 – or 70 per cent – of customers switched lenders, while only 94,045 stayed with their existing bank. While new customers generally get the best offers to lure them in, the fierce competition is forcing banks to offer existing customers incentives such as rate discounts up to 1 per cent and cash back to prevent them leaving.
To read the full article click here: https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/interest-rates/banks-in-home-loan-competition-as-2370-people-refinance-mortgages-everyday/news-story/47b1dc2d7222e0552bdebb9ee000fa2a
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