Interest Rates
Home Loan Interest Rate
History to October 30 2008
The attached graph is factoring in the 1% drop announced by the RBA in the first week of October. A more recent graph of interest rates to January 2009 is available on this page.
Following this announcement most, but not all lenders, dropped their variable interest rates by 0.80 percent. A little later in October one competing bank dropped their rates by another 0.25 percent making them the lowest variable rate.
BUT another competing lender only had to drop their standard variable home loan interest rates 0.21 percent to equal the lenders rates who had just dropped 0.25 percent.
Since then other lenders have announced rate drops of even 0.30 percent.
Interest rates alone do not make the lowest cost deal.
- Application fees
- Legal fees
- Mortgage insurance
- Valuation fees
- Account keeping fees
- Early repayment fees
- Switch fees
- Discharge fees
- Deferred establishment fees
Any combination of these fees or charges can more than erode away any benefit of a low interest rate if comparisons are not calculated carefully.
