Bendigo Bank
Bendigo Bank increased variable home loan rates for new owner occupier and investor loans by 25 basis points. The key increases were:
- Express Variable P&I: Now 5.72% p.a. (5.87% p.a. comparison rate*)
- Investor Express Variable P&I: Now 5.97% p.a. (6.12% p.a. comparison rate*)
These loans carry maximum LVRs of 90% and a maximum loan size of $3 million. The Express line is online-only.
AMP
AMP increased rates on a few key home loan rates by 10 basis points, with the highlights including:
- Essential Home Loan 80% LVR: Now 5.94% p.a. (5.97% p.a. comparison rate*)
- Investor Essential Home Loan 80% LVR: Now 6.04% p.a. (6.07% p.a. comparison rate*)
Various home loans in the Professional Package line were also increased by between 5 and 10 basis points. That said, a number of home loan rates with differing LVRs were reduced by up to 10 basis points.
Other key movers
- Newcastle Greater Mutual (Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank) increases variable rates by up to 20 basis points
- IMB increases variable rates by up to 10 basis points
- Unity Bank increases variable rates by up to 10 basis points
Likelihood of RBA August increase?
NAB economists said the "RBA is not quite done yet", hinging forecasts on strong jobs data, while ANZ economists have pencilled in a pause in August, saying forthcoming inflation data will be the bigger tell.
Market expectations thus far was that 75% of analysts surveyed expected a cash rate hold at the RBA's August meeting.
However that was prior to jobs data released, which posted a strong figure; the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% in June.
Rounded to two decimal places, the rate was actually 3.47% - only slightly above the 50-year low posted in October 2022.
Nearly 33,000 jobs were added in June, with unemployment decreasing by 11,000 - double most analysts' expectations.
This muddies the waters somewhat, with the RBA also looking to next week's quarterly inflation figures, in which major bank economists have pencilled a slight cooling of the annualised figure to 6.2%-6.3%.
Job ads data from Seek shows a 2.3% drop in June, and NAB economists say this could be due to migrants filling positions.
"Population growth has surged as the number of temporary visa holders in the country has rapidly rebuilt and migrant inflows have resumed, but labour demand has been more than sufficient to absorb these higher population flows," they said.
"The level of employment is fully back to a pre-pandemic trend given the sharp rise in the participation rate and fall in unemployment."
The participation rate, which is a measurement of those who can work either employed or looking for work, was still strong at 66.8%.
This correlates with the Seek data which showed the number of applicants per job listing surged to 83.1 in May, representing a 3% jump.
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