Anthony Landahl

Then you add the cost of living pressures, living expenses going up.

That additionally impacts what someone is able to borrow.

So what we're finding is the first homebuyers have those affordability constraints.

and they're being squeezed a little bit from all sides.

Cost of living pressures, increasing interest rates, that's impacting how much they can borrow.

And then again, that's flowing through to what they can afford to buy.

Yeah, look, everyone's situation's different.

But what we're seeing is numbers like that.

Someone who might have been able to borrow, say, to keep it simple, a million dollars before, we might now be seeing them being able to borrow $900,000 or $950,000.

Cost of living pressures are coming through.

That's impacting the provider benchmark, the HEM measure we call it, and also interest rate increases affecting what they're assessing the borrower's interest rate at.

That's impacting what we're seeing around 5% to 10%.

We're certainly seeing people become a lot more aware of the interest rates, what they're paying and different options out there on the market.

So for some of our existing clients, it's a matter of saying, okay, who's your existing provider?

Why did we go to them in the first place?

Was it a credit policy reason or for interest rates?

So often there might be an opportunity to either renegotiate with your existing provider or there's so many other providers out there on the market that we can leverage who might still have lower rates than maybe what their existing provider's offering.

So yeah, we are seeing a lot more conversation around interest rates.

And when I say a lot more opportunities to refinance, it's probably more people looking to see where they can get the best deal at the moment, which may lead to a renegotiation with their existing provider, or ultimately it may lead to changing off providers to secure them a better rate.

Because at the moment with rates rising so quickly, it's making a massive difference.