PHOTO: SUPPLIED – A mortgage interest rate increase can be manageable if you’re working but quickly become a crisis if you lose your job.
OPINION: They say property is all about location, but it’s also about timing. Whenever you buy in, you need to be able to hold on when the going gets tough, so you don’t have to sell at an inopportune time.
If you haven’t been in the market long – or your memory is short – you might wonder what a bad time to sell looks like. Interest rates have been low for the better part of a decade, and house prices have been rising almost as long. Demand still outstrips supply, and the OCR isn’t expected to rise until 2020.
But assuming prices will always rise or that borrowing will always be cheap is foolish – just ask someone who experienced floating rates north of 10 per cent around 2007, or 20 per cent in the 1980s. Or consider that prices fell 40 per cent in the late 1970s, and during the GFC they fell 8 per cent.
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