Interest Rates stay on hold

Great news for investors today. The RBA kept rates on hold at its first meeting for 2024. This means that the cash rate remains at 4.35%. This is great news for property investors watching their current cash flows.

Keeping rates on hold for this month was what most analysts had anticipated. With most now predicting that rates will start to come down in the second half of this year.

The main driver to the steadying of interest rates was the drop in inflation. While inflation is coming down (a more in depth look at that coming next week) global economy still looked a little uncertain. The Chinese economy has been a hard one to predict with uncertainty around its housing market and supply and the war in the Ukraine and Middle East may have some affect on the Australian economy.

Chief Economist at Creditor Watch stated that while an interest rate cut may not be too far away inflation was still too high for that to happen yet.

“At 4.1 per cent, the December inflation figure is still too high for the board to consider a rate cut today, however, all indicators point to inflation falling faster than last year’s forecasts, and this may well result in a decrease to the cash rate sometime in the middle of the year, rather than the latter half,” she said.

“Inflation is also falling rapidly in major overseas economies, and central banks in the USA, UK and Europe are likely to consider cuts to their interest rates over the next few months.”