The routine
Seven checks, in order of what they are worth. Everything here uses information you already have or that your lender publishes. Nobody needs to call you.
The seven checks
In order. The first check is worth more than the other six combined, so if you only do one thing, do that one and stop.
1 Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Table F6, data to 31 May 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
2 Canstar, Home Loan Comparison, lowest variable rates table dated 2 July 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
On fees
Package fees are not automatically bad. They are bad when they are not buying anything. Commonwealth Bank's Home Loan Wealth Package, for example, carries a non-refundable annual fee of $395 payable in advance.3 That is worth paying if the rate discount attached to it exceeds $395 a year on your balance, and it is not if it does not.
On a $500,000 balance, $395 is about 8 basis points. So a package discount of a tenth of a per cent or more pays for itself, and anything less does not. Run that against your own balance before deciding the fee is a rip-off or a bargain.
3 Commonwealth Bank, Home Loan Wealth Package, fee current as at 26 July 2026.
The call
The ACCC's Home Loan Price Inquiry found borrowers missing out on significant savings by not switching.4 In practice the switch is often unnecessary, because the threat of it is what moves the rate.
Call your lender's retention team with three numbers: your current rate, their current advertised rate, and your loan to value ratio. Ask them to match their own offer. It is not a credit application, there is no enquiry on your file, and the downside is that they say no.
If they say no, ask what they would need to see to change the answer, and price a refinance properly before deciding. How to compare rates without being sold to covers what to look at, and how much equity you need covers whether the switch is even available to you.
4 ACCC, Home Loan Price Inquiry, 5 December 2020.
The catch
Every input in this review moves on its own schedule. Rates change when the RBA moves and when lenders decide to compete. Your balance falls monthly. Your property value shifts with the market around you, tracked monthly across Australia by Cotality's Home Value Index.5
So an annual review is a snapshot of a system that changed eleven times since the last one. It is far better than nothing and it is still the wrong shape for the problem. The moments worth acting on are crossings, and a crossing that happens in September is worth much less when you find it the following June.
5 Cotality, Home Value Index, July 2026 release, released 1 July 2026, reporting June 2026 data.
Questions
At least once a year, and sooner after any RBA move, any change to your property value, or any fixed term approaching its end. The gap between your rate and the market accumulates rather than appearing at once, so an annual check catches most of it before it becomes expensive.
No. Everything in this review uses information you already have or that lenders publish openly. A broker is useful when you decide to switch and want the paperwork handled, but the review itself is yours to do, and doing it first means you arrive at any conversation knowing what you should be paying.
Your actual current interest rate against what your own lender advertises today for a comparable new loan. That one comparison catches most of the money most of the time. Everything else in a review is worth doing, but nothing else is worth as much per minute spent.
Not in itself. Looking at your own rate, comparing published rates and calling your lender to ask for a better one involve no credit enquiry. Only a formal application to a new lender is recorded on your credit file, and that only happens if you decide to refinance.
Then you have learned something useful and lost nothing. Ask what rate they would offer if you were a new customer, and whether a discharge form would change their answer. If it does not, you can price a refinance elsewhere with a clear view of what you are leaving behind.
Sources
Market figures are point in time published figures, checked each time this page is reviewed.
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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.
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