Negotiating mortgage rates
Negotiating mortgage rates
Once upon a time, I seem to remember some folks managing to negotiate better rates than carded.
Is this still a thing?
If so, how do you go about doing it?
We haven't had luck recently. It used to be we could just send a message through our online banking account asking for a better rate and they would just knock 0.2% off the rate no questions asked. But then one day ANZ introduced online specials where if you refixed using their online thingy you'd get 0.2% off, and from that point on whenever we messaged they would just quote us the online refixing rate.
I gave up trying eventually.
With that said, there's no harm in working out what you can get yourself then asking a mortgage broker. We paid the carded rate for years for our flexiloan account (revolving credit) before talking to a mortgage broker. They couldn't get us better fixed rates, but they got us a deal on the flexiloan. I hadn't even considered trying to get the rate reduced. That was like a 0.5% drop or something.
We're totally new to the whole mortgage thing, but for us, we went with a Mortgage Broker who knocked a bit off the carded rates. Can't quite remember how much it was though, probably somewhere in the 0.30% ballpark.
Get another quote from a different broker. You'll be shocked at how fast the rates go down.
You can also buy down points. Basically the broker is going to make their money off markup. They get a percentage for every percentage they bump you. You can then buy those down. That means you pay several thousand dollars to lower the rate. It can be tens of thousands depending on the buy down and the cost of the house. But do the math and it can equate to hundreds of thousands over the life of the loan. If you're not planning on staying there for 30 years then do the math against how long you think you'll be there.