Macquarie and St George banks will increase their variable rates for owner-occupiers and investors...Interest rate rises a win-win for RBA
Rate hiking spreads beyond the majors
Macquarie and St George banks will increase their variable rates for owner-occupiers and investors, following the lead of the four major banks.
With a 20 basis points rise, Macquarie’s standard variable rate will become 5.70% p.a., and 5.97% p.a for investors. St George opted for a 15bp rise, which will bring their owner-occupied variable rate to 5.69% p.a. and investment rate to 5.94% p.a. The rate increases for both banks come into effect on the 20th November.
Explaining the move to brokers, Macquarie attributed the rise as a “response to market conditions” whereas St George said increasing rates would help offset the cost of increased capital requirements.
The move was a natural progression of the major banks’ rate hikes: St George is owned by Westpac, which was the first major to increase rates, albeit by 20 basis points. Macquarie operates on the same internal risk-weighting model as Australia’s four major banks.
Interest rate rises a win-win for RBA
(Bloomberg) -- Australia’s interest-rate increase by proxy will help put the brakes on its housing market while also reining in the currency. That’s a win-win situation for the central bank.
All four of the country’s biggest lenders have responded to stricter capital requirements by boosting home-loan rates for both owner occupiers and investors, pushing up borrowing costs for more than 80 percent of mortgage holders. That’s likely to further temper a housing market that’s showing signs of slowing after record low central bank rates helped drive Sydney housing prices up 60 percent over the past three years.
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While it’s not a policy directly controlled by the Reserve Bank of Australia, the monetary authority was working with banking overseers to lessen housing market risks. The effective tightening engineered by stronger regulation has a distinct advantage over a cash-rate increase: it doesn’t cause the currency to strengthen. In fact, by widening the scope for a reluctant RBA to lower its benchmark, the sequence of events helped weaken the Aussie.
“This is a positive from the RBA’s perspective because it addresses financial stability concerns and once those are addressed they can focus on their economic targets which are full employment and inflation,” Greg Gibbs, director of Amplifying Global FX Capital, said from Singapore. “The low currency is helping support the non-resource sectors of the economy and the RBA would like it to remain low during this period of transition.”
The RBA has in recent months stopped voicing concern over the strength of the Aussie, suggesting it’s now more comfortable with the level of the currency. It’s fallen by about 25 percent over the past two years to 72.57 U.S. cents as of 5 p.m. on Friday in Sydney. That weakening of the currency is helpful as the economy navigates away from reliance on mining investment and suffers from a slump in commodity export prices.
The central bank is also showing increased comfort with the state of the real-estate market. The RBA said in its semiannual financial stability review that the market may be starting to slow, while rapid home construction in some areas is creating some oversupply. Clearance rates for residential property auctions have slid below 60 percent from a peak of more than 84 percent.
The swaps market is signaling a 60 percent chance that the RBA will cut its benchmark below an already record low 2 percent by the end of March, with a 34 percent chance that it will come as soon as next week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
