Life hacks: It doesn’t take much to get your lender to drop your home loan interest rate

SPEAKING from experience, Sophie Elsworth has managed to talk her lender into dropping her variable rate on many occasions. Here’s how she did it.

I CAN speak from experience because over the years I’ve managed to talk my lender into dropping my variable rate on many occasions.

In fact they’ve dropped it so many times that I’ve lost track of how many out-of-cycle rate falls they’ve given me for simply asking.

Several months back I was paying more than four per cent on my owner occupier variable rate loan but after writing many stories informing borrowers they should only be paying a rate with a “3” in front it prompted me to swing into action.

Already twice this year I’ve got two rate falls from my lender by requesting to speak to the retention team, giving them a tough talking-to and threatening to walk away if they didn’t drop my rate.

While they hit me — unsurprisingly — with their argument that their costs of funding are going up and it has to be passed onto customers, I just won’t buy it.

Don’t take “no” for an answer from your lender if they won’t move your interest rate.

One of my best tactics has been to check what deals my lender is offering new customers with the same mortgage size as me every few months. Sure enough, newbies can get a better deal, so this paves the way for a strong argument that I should be getting the same rate too.

I’m paying 3.79 per cent on my 100 per cent variable loan rate now but I’ll be keeping a close eye on this and will be sure to review it again in the coming months.

One mortgage expert recently told me that, with the constant fluctuation of interest rates, it pays to check your home loan rate quarterly, not annually.

Originally published as Life hacks: It doesn’t take much to get your lender to drop your home loan interest rate