News Australia

The Reserve Bank of Australia has cut interest rates by 50 basis points in an unexpected move that should provide welcome relief to many homeowners. The reduction takes the official cash rate to 3.75 percent. Damian Smith CEO of financial comparison site RateCity called the RBA’s decision "a very big move". "They haven’t moved rates [...]

The board of the Reserve Bank of Australia has left the official cash rate at 4.25 percent for the second month in a row. The move was widely expected with inflation at the bottom of the RBA’s target band of 2-3 percent and global economic conditions improving. However, the news may not be met with [...]

  The Board of the Reserve Bank meets tomorrow. In July last year Westpac forecast that the next easing cycle would total 100bps beginning near year’s end. Subsequently, the Board decided to ease the overnight cash rate by 25bps in both November and December. Based on current information, we continue to expect a further 50bps [...]

Home loans by value fell in October and remained flat over the year, suggesting the housing sector remains stagnant. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said on Monday that total housing finance by value fell 2.5 per cent in October, seasonally adjusted, to $20.458 billion. The ABS data also showed that the value of home [...]

Economists are divided on whether borrowers will get a second interest rate cut in as many months on Tuesday. Seven of the 14 economists surveyed by AAP say the RBA will cut the cash rate to 4.25 per cent from 4.5 per cent on December 6. On Melbourne Cup day, the Reserve Bank of Australia [...]

The clouds of economic gloom gathering over the US and Europe could have a silver lining for Australian borrowers – a double rate cut is now predicted for next month. After global shares sustained $2.5 trillion losses last week and US government had its credit rating cut by Standard & Poor’s late on Friday (US [...]

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) left the cash rate steady at 4.75 per cent at its regular monthly board meeting on Tuesday. The decision was expected, with all 11 economists surveyed last week by AAP predicting the RBA would keep rates on hold. The central bank’s board last raised the rate from 4.5 per [...]

Ongoing discount rate loans still leading the pack The popularity of fixed interest rate home loans hit its highest level in five months in June 2011, reaching 12.3% of all approvals for Australia’s largest independently-owned mortgage broker, Mortgage Choice. Every state apart from SA saw a rise in appetite for fixed rate loans. The largest [...]

The government’s National Consumer Credit Protection Act regulations will become law as of July 1, after the Senate yesterday allowed the controversial regulations that ban exit fees in mortgages. However, the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA), which had sought an exemption for smaller lenders from the banning of exit fees, has said while [...]

Yesterday afternoon the Senate voted on a motion by  the Coalition and Independent Nick Xenophon to disallow the Government regulation to ban exit fees.  The strategy (backing MFAA’s campaign over the past few weeks) was to bring the Government to the table to prepare an amended regulation which would have exempted smaller lenders from the [...]