Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 27-Mar-24

New research from Roy Morgan shows that a record 1,629,000 mortgage holders (31.4%) were ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in the three months to February 2024. This was an increase of 20,000 (+0.4%) on the record high number in January 2024 (1,609,000), despite the Reserve Bank board electing to leave interest rates unchanged at 4.35% at its February meeting. However, the proportion of mortgage holders ‘At Risk’ is still well below the record high of 35.6% reached during the Global Financial Crisis because of the larger size of the mortgage market today. The number of Australians ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress has increased by 822,000 since May 2022, when the RBA began a cycle of interest rate increases. Meanwhile, the number of mortgage holders considered ‘Extremely At Risk’ of mortgage stress is now numbered at 987,000 (19.7% of mortgage holders), which is significantly above the long-term average over the last 10 years of 14.3%. These are the latest findings from Roy Morgan’s Single Source Survey, based on in-depth interviews conducted with over 60,000 Australians each year, including over 10,000 owner-occupied mortgage-holders.

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