Roy Morgan data shows mortgage stress has risen for five months running to reach 1.61 million Australians, with views on further rate rises genuinely split among economists. Here is what it means if you are trying to buy your first home.
New research from Roy Morgan shows mortgage stress has climbed for a fifth straight month, with an estimated 1.61 million Australian mortgage holders, around 30.3% of everyone with a home loan, now considered "at risk". That is roughly 68,000 more people than the month before. You do not need a mortgage yet for this to matter. It is a useful signal of how tightly stretched household budgets already are under current rates, right as you are working out how much you could safely borrow.
Roy Morgan's mortgage stress model tracks the share of borrowers whose loan repayments are high relative to their household income. The latest reading marks the fifth consecutive monthly rise since the Reserve Bank began a run of interest rate increases earlier in 2026, and it is the highest level of at-risk borrowers recorded in around two years. The increase has not been even across the country, with households on variable rates and those who bought at the top of the market in recent years generally the most exposed.
It is worth being clear about what "at risk" means here. It is a model, not a list of people who have missed a payment. It captures households whose repayments are eating up a large share of income based on current rates, which is a warning sign rather than a prediction that every one of those households will run into trouble.
Lenders already build a buffer into how much they will let you borrow, typically assessing your ability to repay at a rate a few percentage points above what you would actually pay. Rising stress among existing borrowers is a reminder of why that buffer exists. It shows what happens when a household's actual position gets closer to the edge of what the serviceability test assumed they could handle.
If you are still saving a deposit, this is not a reason to put your plans on hold. It is a reason to be realistic about the size of loan you take on relative to your income, rather than borrowing right up to the maximum a lender will approve.
Views on where rates go next are genuinely split. Some banks and economists have flagged the possibility of at least one more interest rate rise later in 2026, while others expect the Reserve Bank to hold steady for the rest of the year. That kind of disagreement among professional forecasters is a sign of real uncertainty, not a hidden signal either way, and it is one reason rate calls are best left to lenders and the Reserve Bank rather than assumed in advance.
For a first home buyer, the practical takeaway is the same either way: it is worth checking what your repayments would look like if rates moved further, rather than assuming today's numbers are locked in for the life of the loan.
Use these tools to see how your own borrowing plan holds up under different rate scenarios: