Home Loan Interest Rates

Take a look at the mortgage comparison sites and it’s clear that the most competitive home loan offers in the market are all from the smaller lenders. Indeed, my land and construction loan is through one of these smaller lenders, the Heritage Bank -a former Building Society based in Toowoomba, Queensland.

Last week I read with some concern that the smaller lenders had decided to follow their larger counterparts and increase interest rates. “These smaller lenders, who write around 20 per cent of mortgages, have opted to improve profit instead of market share by following the majors' rate hikes in varying degrees, citing capital imposts still well above the big banks.”

However, when I checked the Heritage Bank website I was pleasantly surprised to find that their base home loan rates had not increased. Indeed they had introduced a special offer of 3.98 % for new customers, a discount of 0.56% on their base rate. They had a similar offer this time last year when I applied for my land and construction loan.