February 05, 2024 by Jeremy Kruse
Several home loan lenders started cutting home loan interest rates last week ahead of this week's RBA meeting.
After slashing its fixed home loan rates in January, Macquarie Bank is dropping its variable rates too, leading the drift downwards for many lenders.
Inflation data released last week has buoyed confidence the Reserve Bank of Australia will keep the cash rate steady at its first meeting for 2024 this week.
The official Consumer Price Index figures showed Australia’s headline inflation rate has fallen to an annual rate of 4.1% for the year ending December.
The quarterly rate showed inflation slowed to 0.6%, its smallest quarterly rise since March 2021.
Analysts are now largely unanimous there won’t be any rise to the cash rate this week and that interest rates will begin to fall this year, some forecasting a cut as early as June.
Macquarie trimmed its variable rates on a range of its owner-occupier and investment loans between 9 and 21 basis points.
HSBC also made some significant cuts to its fixed rates with widespread drops of between 45 and 80 basis points on a range of its owner-occupier and investment home loan products.
This is good news for home loan borrowers and we expect to see more interest rate announcements later this week following the RBA meeting.
