Homeowners impacted by COVID-19 encouraged to make contact

homeowners who have had their income impacted by the coronavirus outbreak are being encouraged to seek out hardship options with their lender.

The economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak is evolving daily, if not hourly, across the Australian financial landscape.

Businesses have closed, jobs have been lost, and casual workers have had their hours slashed from work rosters.

If you’re one of the many Australians who have been affected – or are worried that you soon will be – rest assured that you can talk to your lender about hardship options without it affecting your credit report.

Here’s a statement released by Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn, for example:

“We encourage our retail customers who may be facing hardship due to impacts of the virus to contact us so that we can provide them with assistance, for example, hardship options including deferral of loan repayments.”

What are some other options?

If you don’t believe you need to seek financial hardship, but you’d still like a bit of extra breathing room, it may be worth considering refinancing or renegotiating your home loan.

There have been four rate cuts in the past year – including one last month that reduced the RBA’s official cash rate to a record low of 0.5%.

And here’s the thing: lenders don’t automatically drop your repayments when the interest rate falls.

So if you haven’t asked your lender to reduce

your home loan rate over the past year – or even the past month – then you may be able to reduce your monthly repayments by refinancing.

Get in touch

We understand that these are tough and uncertain times, yet rest assured we’re here for you no matter what lies ahead.

If you’d like us to help you explore either your hardship or refinancing options then please get in touch – we’re ready to assist you any way we can.

Regional Finance Brokers