Good morning,

The rate side's been quiet since early May and stays quiet for another week and a half. What moved for your clients overnight wasn't the rate, it was the clock.

Standing Positions

• A client's fixed roll-off - the repayment jump is landing now, not coming

• Borrowing capacity - shrinking quietly with each repricing pass

• Pre-approvals - ageing, then re-tested at a higher rate

• Buyer demand at auction - softening, clearance in the low fifties

Supporting Signals

• RBA cash rate 4.35% (effective 6 May); next decision 16 June. RBA

• Major lenders passed on a +0.25% variable rise effective 15 May, in full, with none since. Lender notices

• APRA held the mortgage serviceability buffer at 3 points on 28 May, and high debt-to-income lending stays capped at 20%. APRA

• Auctions: preliminary national clearance around 51% over the weekend of 31 May–1 June, Melbourne 59.4%; the Cotality value index was flat for May. Cotality

Today's Move
Lenders are now fully through passing on the May rise, and APRA has left the buffer at three points, so a client is still assessed near 8.5%, not the rate they'll actually pay. Capacity isn't falling because anyone changed the rules; it's falling because the number they're tested at went up.

Cost of Waiting
Each 25-point repricing pass trims what a client can borrow by around 2.5%, roughly $13,000–14,000 off a typical single-income approval (illustrative; based on a ~$544k capacity and APRA's 3-point buffer). A pre-approval you lock today clears at today's assessment rate; the same client re-run after the next reprice simply borrows less for the same income. Waiting doesn't hold their options open, it quietly closes them.

The Read
Your clients can read the rate anywhere; that's not your story. Your story is that the same client, the same lender, the same income is a different deal depending on which side of the next repricing pass they sit on.

It shows up two ways. A borrower coming off a 2.2% fixed onto today's ~5.5% variable on a $600k loan (illustrative) is facing about $1,100 more a month the day their term ends; better heard from you first. And a buyer's pre-approval written this week buys more house than the same approval written after the next move, with the auction market already drifting to give them a little room.

So the work is to run the roll-offs and the pre-approvals now, while the assessment rate is the one you can quote. The client who acts before the next reprice keeps choices the one who waits won't have.

The Trigger
The next call is priced as a hold, so the date to circle is the 24 June CPI. A hot print firms the August hike and every pre-approval in your pipeline gets re-tested lower on the next assessment, before a single lender publishes a new rate.

One Line
"Before we lock onto a property, can we re-run your borrowing power; it may have shifted since we first ran the numbers?"

Thanks What Matters