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Most of the buyers I’m speaking with right now are sitting on their hands, and I understand why. The Iran conflict has pushed oil prices higher. Inflation is proving stickier than anyone hoped. Every news cycle delivers another reason to pause. When the world feels uncertain, doing nothing feels prudent.
But here’s what I see, week in and week out, in the conversations I have with clients: waiting isn’t a free option. It’s a bet. And the longer I do this work, the more convinced I am that it’s usually a losing one.
Let me show you why.
Let’s look at this a little differently. If you’ve saved $200,000 and leave it in the bank, at around 4.5% you’ll earn roughly $9,000 over the next 12 months before tax.
Now compare that to stepping into the market. Take an $800,000 property. With a $600,000 interest-only loan at around 7%, the interest cost is about $42,000 a year. But that property is also generating income, say $550 a week, or roughly $28,600 annually.
So the net cost of holding it isn’t $42,000. It’s closer to $13,000. Then there’s the part most people focus on, but often in isolation – growth.
At 7%, that same property increases in value by about $56,000 over the year. So, in practical terms, you’re spending around $13,000 to hold an asset that’s moved by $56,000.
That’s a very different outcome to earning $9,000 in the bank. The gap, more than $30,000 in a single year, is the part that rarely gets factored in.
And it doesn’t show up anywhere obvious. You only feel it later, when the market has already moved.
The other thing clients consistently underestimate is how quickly their borrowing capacity can shift. Lenders apply serviceability buffers, so a small change in rates has an outsized impact on what you can actually borrow.
Take a dual-income household on a combined $180,000 with minimal liabilities. Today they might service around $900,000 (and yes, it varies by lender). Push rates up by another 0.75%, which is just two or three small moves, and that capacity can drop to somewhere between $820,000 and $840,000.
That’s a $60,000 to $80,000 reduction in what you can buy. Same household. Same income. Same savings. The only thing that changed was the calendar.
In practical terms, that means the suburb you wanted is off the table, the property you would have competed on goes to someone else, and you’re forced to compromise on quality.
Not everyone is paralysed. The clients I’d call the sharpest are quietly preparing while others wait for the picture to clear.
They’re getting their borrowing capacity reviewed now, so they know exactly where they stand. They’re securing pre-approvals before lender appetite shifts again. Some are refinancing to extend interest-only terms, or releasing equity into a cash buffer, which gives them flexibility regardless of which way rates move next.
None of this is speculation. It’s positioning. The buyers who get the good outcomes in markets like this aren’t the ones who time it perfectly. They’re the ones who are ready the day the right property appears.
If you walk into your bank, you get one credit policy. That’s it. If your situation is even slightly outside their box, the answer is no.
What I see every day is that policies are diverging. One lender will decline a deal another lender will happily fund. Non-bank lenders are taking on more business than they were two years ago, particularly for borrowers who don’t fit the major banks’ tightening criteria. The old playbook of going to your usual bank and hoping for the best stopped working a while ago.
This isn’t about any one lender being good or bad. The point is that there’s almost always a workable structure, if you know where to look for it.
Waiting itself isn’t the problem. Waiting without a strategy is.
While you’re waiting, three things tend to happen: rates move, your borrowing capacity moves with them, and the property you wanted gets bought by someone else. None of those are recoverable, and none of them care about how clear the global picture has become.
If you’re unsure whether to act, don’t start with “should I buy?” Start with “what’s actually possible for me right now?” Once you know your numbers, the decision usually makes itself.
Happy to run a borrowing capacity scenario based on your situation, or map out a pre-approval strategy so you’re ready when the right opportunity appears. The conversation costs you nothing. The waiting might.
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