The three life events that should always trigger a broker call — and the savings most people miss.
Most Australians look at their home loan when they take it out and barely look at it again until something goes wrong. That’s not laziness — it’s a quiet assumption that the loan that was right at signup is still the right loan today. In our experience, that’s rarely true after the third year.
Why the "set and forget" loan is the most expensive one
Lender pricing changes constantly. Cash rate moves, internal funding costs, retention budgets, and the bank’s appetite for new vs existing business all push your rate around — and they almost never push it in your favour without you asking. The “loyalty tax” — the gap between what a lender charges its existing book versus what it advertises to win new customers — is well-documented and substantial. On a $500k loan, the difference between the new-customer rate and the back-book rate is often 0.4–0.7% per year. That’s $2,000 to $3,500 a year in cash, every year, that you don’t notice because the repayment is on autopilot.
And rate is only one lever. Loan structure — offset accounts, redraw, split between fixed and variable, the IO/P&I balance, the LVR threshold — moves the cost just as much as the headline rate, and almost always in directions you can’t see from a mortgage statement.
The three life events that should trigger a review
1. Your equity has crossed a band. When your loan-to-value drops below 80% — and especially below 70% or 60% — you become a fundamentally different borrower in the lender’s eyes. The rate you should be paying drops. The rate you actually pay almost never adjusts on its own.
2. Your income, household, or job has changed. New job, partner’s return to work after parental leave, a self-employed pivot, an inheritance, redundancy. Each one shifts what you can comfortably service, what features the loan should carry, and which lenders are best placed to look at your file.
3. A fixed-rate period is ending. Banks roll fixed loans onto their standard variable rate the day after expiry — almost always one of the highest rates on the book. Reviewing 60–90 days before expiry is the single highest-value broker call most homeowners can make.
What we look at when we sit down with your loan
We pull three things: the headline rate vs the current new-customer rate at your lender (and the next three competitive lenders), the structure (offset / split / repayment type / direct-debit setup) against your cash-flow shape, and the exit costs — what does it actually cost you to leave if a refinance makes sense. The first two answer “is your current loan competitive”. The third tells you whether moving is worth the friction.
Often the right answer is not “refinance” — it’s “ring your bank with this number” and a 0.3–0.5% rate reduction lands without changing lender. We coach you through that call or do it on your behalf.
The cost of doing nothing
On a 25-year, $600k loan, a 0.5% rate difference is $87,000 over the life of the loan — and the kind of money that should be on your terms, not the bank’s. The call to a broker takes 30 minutes; the review itself takes a day of your file work and ours. The cost of not making the call compounds for as long as the loan runs.
Talk to us. If your loan hasn’t had a fresh set of eyes on it in the last 12 months — or a fixed period is about to roll — book a free 20-minute conversation and we’ll tell you whether a review is worth your time. Book a Conversation.