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

New research from Roy Morgan shows that 1,531,000 mortgage holders (30.3%) were ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in the three months to March 2024. This was a fall of 98,000 (-1.1%) on a month earlier, after the RBA elected to leave interest rates unchanged for the third straight meeting. The level of mortgage stress in March is the lowest so far this year; this month’s decline has been driven by rising household incomes, which has reduced the financial pressure on some mortgage holders. The proportion of mortgage holders now ‘At Risk’ is well below the record high of 35.6% reached during the Global Financial Crisis because of the larger size of the Australian mortgage market today. However, the number of Australians ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress has increased by 724,000 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 918,000 (18.7% of mortgage holders), which is significantly above the long-term average over the last 10 years of 14.4%. 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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