Home loan pricing moved on multiple fronts this week, with the number of lenders to have cut new customer variable rates now standing at 18.
Bendigo Bank trimmed a variable rate by 0.15 percentage points, while five other lenders cut a combined 58 fixed rates by an average of 0.22 percentage points — led by cuts of up to 0.50 percentage points from AMP Bank. Summerland Bank bucked the trend, lifting four fixed rates by an average of 0.11 percentage points.
"Competition among lenders continues to create opportunities for some households to cut their borrowing costs," Canstar.com.au data insights director Sally Tindall (pictured) said, though she cautioned that "the bigger gains still typically come from refinancing" rather than negotiating with an existing lender.
Despite the competitive pressure, pricing gaps remain wide: the average variable rate for owner-occupiers sits at 6.67%, against a market-leading rate of 5.69%.
Separately, APRA's latest Quarterly Property Exposure statistics, reveal that even as total lending volumes fell in the March quarter, buyers stretching to the very edge of serviceability — putting down deposits of 5% or less — accounted for a larger share of new owner-occupier loans than ever recorded.
Tindall flagged the timing as less than ideal, "not exactly ideal timing given the subsequent slide in property prices," though at just 4.3% of all new owner-occupier loans, she said the trend is "unlikely to have APRA worried just yet."
The same data showed loans 30 to 89 days in arrears ticking up slightly to 0.49% of the loan book — still well below average — while interest-only lending edged up marginally to 11.8% of all mortgages.
Tindall said that stability suggests "existing borrowers aren't switching over to interest-only in search of relief from rising rates," even as rate pressure persists across the market.
Taken together, the figures point to a mortgage market where lenders are competing hard for new business, while low-deposit borrowers face a genuinely riskier entry point than the headline numbers alone suggest.
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