Pamela Philips and Michelle White from Chase Wealth Australia sit down with the number the headlines never put next to the panic: every 0.25 per cent rate rise on a $500,000 loan costs about $24 a week. From there they work through why interest rates get more airtime than they deserve, and why the fear around them moves faster than the reality.
Rates have sat at 12 per cent, at 7 per cent, and are in the sixes now, so Michelle makes the case that the movement matters far less than the coverage suggests. They draw the same parallel with the fuel shortage panic, where people paused investment decisions over a shortage that never actually arrived. Put the $24 a week beside a property earning around $100,000 a year, roughly $2,000 a week, and the proportion becomes obvious.
The second half is about method. Chase Wealth Australia models every client’s numbers on what Michelle calls the spreadsheet of doom, where the interest rate is one column among many rather than the whole story. They walk through forecasting the first 12 months and the next, and the levers that genuinely reduce risk: fixing a loan for a period, targeting low vacancy, and making sure the rental yield can carry it.
