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Staff Reporter
Business opportunities still abound for brokers that have all their ducks in a row, Loan Market Group has claimed.
According to a spokesperson for the brokerage, Paul Smith, refinancing has become the major area of growth in the housing finance market.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics found the number of people refinancing increased by 11.4 per cent in the month the May.
“We’ve clearly entered a period where the growth in refinancing is largely offsetting the subdued activity in home purchases,” Mr Smith said.
“Obviously the natural disasters earlier in the year kept many people out of the market, but those already in have been able to enjoy the benefits of some highly competitive lenders and market conditions.”
Mr Smith said borrowers in May took advantage of deals being offered by the banks up until the end of June before a federal government ban on mortgage exit fees came into force as well as a well publicized ‘banking war.’
He said the amount of refinancing activity could have been greater were it not for the work being done by banking retention teams.
“Existing customers who enquire about upgrading or changing their mortgages are being given a lot of attention by these retention teams who are often willing to review their pricing in some circumstances,” he said.
“Recently we polled our mortgage brokers about the refinancing activity they were seeing and the overwhelming response was that banking retention teams were pulling out all the stops to keep customers from switching lenders.”
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