New house buyers in Australia to face interest rate hike from Westpac's RAMS

RAMS, the group owned by Westpac, is raising fixed interests rates by 0.4 percent. The lender is the latest to react to the growing market concerns. Analysts feel that official rates have come to the lowest point. A hike is is the natural outcome.

The changes mean that all the fix rate loans from RAMS will have more than 4 percent interest rates. Investors planning to take a five-year fixed rate investment property loan will see this change from Nov. 28. They will have to pay interest in the range of 0.6 percent to 4.9 percent. The same is the case for homeowners/occupiers with a five-year fixed loan. They will see an increase of 0.54 basis points to 4.39 percent in their interests. However, it won’t affect those with an existing loan with the lender.

This is also applicable to another of Westpac’s subsidiary, St George.

RAMS is the first major bank to introduce the change. And a few small-scale lenders have followed suit in the past two weeks. UBank, a subsidiary of National Australia Bank, also has increased variable interests up to 0.1 percent. The change will come to effect from Dece. 2. It will affect all mortgage holders both existing and new. The bank's fixed home loan rates will remain the same.

In the meantime, customers are complaining of intermittent issues in Westpac online and mobile banking from Wednesday. The system was unable to process payments or show updated balance. Customers also complained of losing transaction history, inability to make payments and difficulty to transfer funds.

Westpac confirmed the issue and expressed its regret. It is encouraging its customers to visit its banks and ATMs.