The roll-off
If you do nothing, the loan moves to your lender's standard variable rate on the day the term finishes. That rate is chosen by them and it is rarely their best one.
The revert
Your loan reverts to the lender's standard variable rate automatically. No decision is required from you, which is precisely the problem: the default is the option the lender prefers, and it is almost never the sharpest rate they have available.
The size of the step depends entirely on when you fixed. The RBA's Table F6 series tracks both the average rate on existing fixed owner occupier loans with three years or less to run, 5.53% in May 2026, and the average rate on new fixed loans of the same term, 6.07%.1 The gap between those two is the shape of the step a borrower rolling off today is facing before any negotiation.
1 Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Table F6, data to 31 May 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
The timeline
Eight weeks is enough time to do this without being rushed, and being rushed is what costs money. A refinance takes a few weeks to settle, so starting at the deadline means paying the revert rate while the paperwork runs.
2 Canstar, Home Loan Comparison, lowest variable rates table dated 2 July 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
The decision
This is genuinely a judgement call and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Fixing is not a bet on rates falling or rising. It is buying certainty about your repayment for a period, and paying for it in flexibility.
What you give up is worth naming: most fixed loans cap extra repayments, many exclude offset accounts, and leaving early triggers a break cost that can be large. What you get is a repayment you can plan around, which for a household with a tight budget can be worth more than the arithmetic suggests.
The RBA publishes the cash rate target and its history in Table F1.1,3 and it is the input everyone reads differently. Nobody knows where it goes next, including the people whose fixed rate pricing implies a view. Decide on what you need rather than on a forecast.
Part fixed and part variable is a reasonable answer for anyone who cannot decide, and it is under-used. You get a predictable floor under most of the repayment and keep offset and extra repayments on the rest. It is not a clever hedge, it just spreads the regret.
3 Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Table F1.1, data to 30 June 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
Afterwards
Whatever you land on, the rate you negotiate at roll-off is competitive on the day you negotiate it and slowly stops being competitive afterwards. That is the same drift described in the loyalty tax, and a freshly repriced loan is not immune to it.
A roll-off date is a hard deadline that forces attention once. Nothing forces it again. Ratey re-runs your home loan health check monthly and counts down the next fixed expiry, so the attention arrives on schedule rather than by luck.
Questions
Unless you act, the loan reverts automatically to your lender's standard variable rate. That revert rate is set by the lender, is rarely competitive, and is often well above what the same lender offers new customers. The change happens on schedule whether or not you noticed it coming.
About eight weeks out. That is enough time to compare, ask your lender for a rate, and refinance elsewhere if the answer is poor, without being rushed by the deadline. Leaving it until the week of expiry usually means accepting the revert rate for a month or two while a switch is processed.
It depends on what you are buying. Fixing buys certainty about repayments and gives up flexibility, since fixed loans usually restrict extra repayments and often exclude offset accounts. Variable does the reverse. There is no generally correct answer, only whether you would rather protect your budget or keep your options.
Yes, and it is the first thing to try. Ask what they will offer you to stay, quoting their own advertised rate for new customers. It is not a credit application and costs nothing. Lenders reprice existing loans on request far more often than most borrowers expect, particularly near a roll-off date.
A break cost applies when you exit a fixed loan before the term ends, and it can be substantial. It does not apply once the term has run its course. If you are approaching expiry rather than trying to leave early, you can switch at the roll-off date without a break fee.
Sources
Market figures are point in time published figures, checked each time this page is reviewed.
Page last reviewed
Ratey
Working it out once tells you where you stand today. It moves as your balance falls and the market shifts, and the moments worth acting on are easy to miss. Ratey re-runs your free home loan health check every month against more than 35 Australian lenders, tracks your property value, equity and LVR, and tells you when something is worth doing.
Free, and independent of every lender
Free to use. Set up in about two minutes.