Here’s our top four strategies to combat the rise of interest rates and help to protect your assets:
- Stagger you lending – if you break your loans down into several smaller loans, this will help to spread your risk over time, and hopefully average out your interest rates in the long run.
No one can predict the future, however if you split your loan into several smaller loans and stagger them to shorter and longer term fixed loans you will have both the benefit of the usually lower interest rates for a shorter period and the benefit of security over a longer period. Your interest rate over the period of your loan will be the average of the longer and shorter rates over time. A very simple example is as follows: $1m loan split into five $200K smaller loans. If the rates were 1 year @ 2%, 2 years @ 3%, 3 years @4%, 4 years @5% and 5 years at 6%. For this example, we assume that over the 5 years interest rates remain consistent. This would mean that over the course of the years, your rate would average out to be 4% with the added security of having some funds locked in.
- Reduce your lending (duh!),
This probably doesn’t need much explanation. If you can put aside an extra $100 per week, this will be an extra $5k per year of the loan amount. Over a 30 year loan that’s $156k and a lot of saving on your interest.
- Diversify your portfolio with respect to the bright-line rule, interest deduction allowances, and of course your personal circumstances
You can sell off the elements of your portfolio that are not tax efficient and replace them by purchasing one that are for example if you have older properties that are heavily geared, in 2024 you will not be able to claim interest as a tax deductible allowance. If you are in this situation, you could look to sell this property and buy a new build where interest can be deducted before tax, This is one to discuss with you accountant or financial advisor, as there are a lot of rules that you must take into account when looking into this.
- Utilise revolving facilities and interest only loans.
Again one to be discussed with a financial advisor or mortgage broker. If you need to speak to one, please get in touch, as we work with excellent partners who will be able to help as this is about structuring your loan. For example if you currently have $1m loan on interest and principle because you want to pay off your loan, another way of achieving the same goal is to have (say) $900K on interest only and $100K on a revolving facility which you can pay into whenever you choose to. So you could aim to pay $20K of this off each year for 5 years. The benefit is that you can also draw on these funds when you need. Another benefit is that some banks don’t take revolving facilities into account when calculating servicing.
Disclaimer: The information above is not financial advise and should not be taken as such. For professional financial advice, you must speak to a qualified financial advisor. Please contact us if you would like us to put you in contact with one of our specialist partners.
