6 reasons to refinance your home loan

There’s more to a home loan than just the interest rate. If it’s been a while since you bought your house, there might be new features that you didn’t know about.

You might be interested in features designed to help you save on home loan interest and pay your loan off sooner, like offset transaction accounts, or the ability to make extra repayments. Or maybe you want to split your loan between variable and fixed rates. Some home loans also let you choose your repayment frequency, provide you with a rewards credit card or allow you to redraw your extra repayments without fees.

You could be coming to the end of a fixed rate term and want to see if you can get a better interest rate or a more flexible home loan once your fixed term ends. Fixed rates can work really well in the right situation but often when your fixed rate term ends, you’re rolled over to a higher variable rate by default. If you wait until after your fixed term to refinance, you may avoid paying a ‘break cost’ fee associated with leaving a fixed rate home loan, which makes it a prime time to look around at what home loan offers are available.

You could be trying to simplify your finances and save money by consolidating debts like your personal loan, car loan or credit card into your mortgage. Every lender has different rules about combining multiple debts into one consolidated loan, but debt consolidation is a handy feature of many home loans and might be a reason that you consider refinancing.

If you’re thinking of renovating, you might already have extra value (equity) in your property to use. If your property has increased in value or you didn’t use all the available value when you first borrowed, you might be able to unlock this to renovate.

If you’re refinancing to access the equity in your home, you could use those funds to invest in property, shares, or other opportunities.