21243 – Mortgage Cost Pressure

Mortgage Cost Pressure (21243) measures whether the mortgage interest that employee households pay is rising faster than their living costs as a whole: growth over the year in their mortgage interest charges less growth over the year in their overall living costs, in percentage points. Higher readings mean mortgage costs are outpacing living costs. It is read alongside Debt-Servicing Burden (21242), which reads the level of repayments against income.

Primary metric: Node Z-Score (Z₂₁₂₄₃)

Metric typology: single-series Z-score of a growth gap.

Tier-1 sovereign statistical releases. No commercial data provider dependency exists within this node.

The chart shows the node’s reading in every quarter, measured against the 2011–2025 baseline.

At −0.1644σ (Q2 2026), employee households’ mortgage interest charges rose 2.77% over the year to June 2026, slightly less than their living costs overall (3.69%), a gap of −0.92 points. Position. 40.7, ranked against 109 quarters since June 1999.

The gap had been negative since September 2025, reaching −8.97 points in March 2026, after the cash rate was reduced from 4.35% to 3.60% between February and September 2025. The cash rate rose again from February 2026, to 4.35% by June, and mortgage interest charges rose 8.18% in the June quarter alone, bringing the annual gap back close to zero.

The largest gap on record was +81.96 points in the June quarter 2023, during the 2022–23 tightening, when mortgage interest charges almost doubled within a year.

The other household burden nodes and the household finance node beside them.