Understanding our interest rates for new home loan applications

What are the current advertised home loan interest rates?

You can find Macquarie’s current Home Loan Rate Cards for new home loan applications on our website:

Please note, our home loan interest rates are subject to change without notice.

How can I request pricing for a new home loan application?

We’re committed to transparency and providing competitive home loan rates. The interest rates on our website and your aggregator’s software are regularly updated to reflect our current home loan pricing.

These rates are available to all our accredited home loan brokers for your new home loan applications, making the application process efficient for you and enabling us to assess your customers’ applications faster.

For existing customers, see Reviewing your customer’s variable and fixed interest rates.

What’s the difference between variable and fixed rates?

A variable interest rate on your customer’s home loan account can increase or decrease over the loan period, and your customer’s monthly repayments may vary.

A fixed interest rate locks the interest rate for a set term, from 1 to 5 years. During this fixed term, your customer’s repayments will remain unchanged. However, if changes are required for the home loan account during the fixed term, your customer may incur a break cost. See Understanding fixed rate break costs for more information.

How can my customer have a split rate home loan with variable and fixed interest rates?

It’s possible to structure the home loan facility with fixed and variable interest rate home loan accounts or splits. Both the Offset and Basic Home Loan facilities allow up to 6 home loan accounts to be set up for settlement, which can be either fixed or variable.

An Offset Home Loan must have at least one variable home loan account with a minimum loan account size of $20,000.

See how to apply for a home loan with multiple home loan accounts in ApplyOnline.

How are current variable interest rates calculated?

The variable home loan interest rate your customer pays is set from a reference rate. The reference rate for your customer’s home loan, less any relevant discount, determines the variable interest rate which applies to their loan.

All newly settled Macquarie variable home loan interest rates are currently linked to one of the following reference rates:

Standard Variable Rate (SVR) for Owner Occupied loans with principal and interest repayments
Investment Variable Rate (IVR) for Investment loans with principal and interest repayments
Standard Interest Only Variable Rate (IO SVR) for Owner Occupied loans with interest only repayments
Investment Interest Only Variable Rate (IO IVR) for Investment loans with interest only repayments.

For all new home loan applications, the relevant discount is set at formal approval based on our current advertised rates. Note, the discount from the reference rate may change over the home loan term (e.g. when a variable rate review discount is applied).

When are interest rates confirmed for a home loan application?

For new home loan applications:

Variable interest rates – the discount off the reference rate will be confirmed at formal approval. However, the variable interest rate is subject to change if the reference rate changes prior to settlement.
Fixed interest rates – the interest rate is applied at formal approval and isn’t subject to change prior to settlement.

For principal increase applications, the interest rate is applied at settlement and may be subject to change between formal approval and settlement. A variation confirmation letter will be sent to your customer after settlement, which will confirm the interest rate and repayment for the home loan account.

What happens when interest rate changes are announced before an application settles?

Both our advertised variable and fixed interest rates are subject to change, and changes may occur while a home loan application is still in progress.

See below for more information to be aware of when we change:

variable interest rates
fixed interest rates.

Variable interest rate changes

Depending on whether the reference rate and/or discount has changed, the changes to our advertised variable interest rates during the home loan application may impact the effective variable rate at settlement.

Prior to formal approval, any changes to our interest rates will need to be incorporated into the servicing calculator either by you (pre-submission) or by our team (during assessment).

After formal approval, changes that may impact your customer’s effective variable rate at settlement include:

Increasing or decreasing our reference rates – typically will change the interest rate.
- The interest rate applied at formal approval will increase or decrease by the same amount of the reference rate change. For example, if the effective variable interest rate at formal approval is 6% and the reference rate reduces by 0.25%, the effective variable interest rate at settlement will be 5.75%.
Increasing or decreasing the new customer discount from the reference rate for new customers – typically won’t change the interest rate.
- The discount is applied at formal approval. Therefore, if our advertised rates change due to an increase or decrease to our discount only, it typically won’t change the effective variable interest rate at settlement.

For existing home loan customers, a reference rate change may change their current variable interest rate, whereas a change to our new customer discount won’t change their effective variable interest rate.

Fixed interest rate changes

Prior to formal approval, any fixed rate changes we’ve made will be incorporated into the servicing calculator by you (before submitting) or our team (during assessment) and applied once the application is formally approved.

After formal approval, any fixed rate change we’ve made typically won’t change the fixed rate for your customer’s home loan application. They’ll settle on the fixed rate that was available when the home loan application was formally approved.

How do interest rate changes impact a principal increase application?

Principal increase applications are an increase or top up of an existing home loan facility, either by:

increasing the limit of an existing home loan account, or
creating a new sub account within the home loan facility.

When completing a principal increase application, typically the interest rates aren’t applied until the day of settlement. Therefore, rate changes for both variable and fixed interest rates during the application process will be applied to the principal increase on the day of settlement. That is, they are subject to change between formal approval and settlement.

After settlement, we’ll send a variation confirmation to your customer once the principal increase application settles, confirming the interest rate and repayment amount. You can also view the changes, including interest rates and the increased limit, the day after settlement in our Broker Portal.

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