The cash rate
The cash rate rose 75 basis points in five months
What the RBA cash rate target did over the first half of 2026, what that changes for a loan you already have, and what it cannot tell you about your own rate.
By Ratey. Published .
The move
From 3.60% to 4.35% in five months
The Reserve Bank's cash rate target ended January 2026 at 3.60% and ended June 2026 at 4.35%.1 That is a rise of 75 basis points in five months. Both observations are end-of-month values from the RBA's own published table.
The target is not a mortgage rate. No home loan is written at it, and a change in it does not change your rate by itself. Variable rates are set by lenders, each of which decides what to pass on and when, and fixed rates do not move at all while the term runs.
1 Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Table F1.1, data to 30 June 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
If you are variable
A variable rate is a matter of record, not of news
If your loan is variable, the question is not what the cash rate did. It is what your lender did to your rate while the cash rate was doing it, and that answer is not in any national table. It is on your loan statements, dated, in writing, and specific to you.
Two loans at the same lender, for the same product, can carry different rates depending on when they were written and what was negotiated. The gap between what lenders advertise and what sitting customers keep paying is the mortgage loyalty tax, and it is set by lender pricing decisions, not by the Board.
The relevant record is short. The rate on your most recent statement is the fact, the published benchmarks give it context, and comparing home loan rates covers reading an advertised price against your own. If the repayment has grown, the mortgage stress calculator shows what share of your income the loan is now taking.
If you are fixed
Fixed loans meet the move later, and all at once
A fixed rate holds until the term ends, so five months of cash rate movement changed nothing about those repayments in the meantime. The change waits at the roll-off instead.
The published averages give the wait a size. RBA figures for May 2026 put existing fixed owner-occupier loans with three years or less to run at 5.53% p.a. on average, while new fixed loans of the same term were being written at 6.07% p.a.2 That 54 basis point step between the average sitting loan and the average new one is the published shape of rolling off, before any negotiation. What to do when a fixed rate expires covers the eight weeks before the date, which is when the options are widest.
2 Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Table F6, data to 31 May 2026, retrieved 26 July 2026.
The limits
What the cash rate cannot tell you
It cannot tell you your rate, your lender's next decision, or the Board's. Nobody reliably knows where the target goes next, and nothing on this page forecasts it. The target is one published number with a date on it: useful as a prompt to look at your own loan, useless as a verdict on it.
A verdict needs your numbers: the rate you are on, the balance, the property's value, the LVR band you sit in. A home loan review puts those numbers side by side in about ten minutes, and Ratey re-runs the comparison every month, after the news cycle has moved on.
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Sources
Where these figures come from
Market figures are point in time published figures, checked each time this page is reviewed.
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