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Easy Street Fixed Home Loan
Don't worry about rising interest rates with the Easy Street Fixed Rate Home Loan
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Review by
Marc Terrano
marc@finder.com.auMarc Terrano is a lead publisher and growth marketer at Finder. He has previously worked at Finder as a publisher for frequent flyer points and home loans, and as a writer, podcast host and content marketer. Marc has a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) from the University of Technology Sydney. He’s passionate about creating honest and simple reviews and comparisons to help everyone get value for money.
Expert review
Easy Street is a division of Community First Credit Union, the biggest credit union in Sydney. As part of Community First, you can have the peace of mind that Easy Street is licensed and regulated like all Australian banks. Because Easy Street only offers its products online, it cuts down on overheads and can pass on competitive deals to you.
About this loan
What are the features and benefits of the Easy Street Fixed Home Loan?
- A two or three year fixed term. You can choose to fix your home loan interest rate with Easy Street for two or three years, depending on your plans for the future and where you think interest rates are going in the medium term.
- A 100% offset account. An offset account is a transaction account which is linked to your loan account and any funds in your offset account save you interest on your home loan. For example, if you have a loan of $250,000 and you have $10,000 in your offset account, then when interest is calculated you only pay interest on $240,000. This means your offset account is the ideal place for all of your savings and other income as you can reduce your repayments and your loan term by saving interest and you are not taxed on interest saved, only on interest earned.
- Additional repayments. When you have some extra funds you can deposit them directly into your loan account to reduce your principle amount. This reduces the loan term and the interest you pay. You can make lump sum additional repayments, or you can set up a regular monthly repayment which is more than the minimum amount due. You can pay an additional $25,000 each year fee free.
- Redraw facility. You will feel more confident depositing extra funds into your home loan if you know you can easily access them again, which you can with a redraw facility, which doesn't restrict you with a minimum redraw amount so you only withdraw as much as you need.
- No ongoing fees. There are $0 monthly or ongoing account-keeping fees to pay.
- Switch to a variable rate or another fixed term. When your two or three year fixed term ends you can switch to the standard variable interest rate at the time, or you can fix your loan at the current fixed rates.
- Borrow up to 95%. You can borrow up to 95% of the property value, so you only need to save up a 5% deposit, plus enough to cover lender's mortgage insurance.
- Versatile loan uses. You can use the Easy Street Fixed Home Loan if you are an owner occupier, refinancing, investing or renovating.
Benefits of the Easy Street fixed home loan
The Easy Street Fixed Home Loan has a number of attractive benefits which set it apart from the products on offer by other second tier lenders and help it compete with the loans from the big banks:
- Fully featured. Most fixed rate home loans will have very limited features because the lender has fixed your interest rate and therefore fixed their income and they don't want you making savings in interest and eating into their income with features such as additional repayments and offset accounts. However, the Easy Street Fixed Home Loan has additional repayments and redraw, a 100% offset account, no fees and a generous LVR.
Why choose a fixed interest rate?
- Those on a tight budget. If you have a young family or are starting out in your career, you are probably very careful with your money from week to week and you don't need a fluctuating interest rate impacting on your budget each month.
- You like reliability. Even if you don't need to stick to a tight budget, you might like to know what your finances will be doing from month to month and a fixed interest rate home loan doesn't subject you to the whims of the RBA.
- The bottom of the interest rate cycle. Official interest rates are always running on a cycle of peaks and dips and the best time to choose a fixed interest rate home loan is when official rates are at their lowest. Unfortunately many people choose to fix their home loan interest rate at the peak of a cycle, when they can't take any more interest rate rises, but if you can ride out the peak and wait for the bottom of the next dip, you can lock in an affordable low rate.
