On 11 May 2009, we published a Blog article titled “Are interest rates really low?”. It argued that to assess whether interest rates were “cheap” or “expensive” it was more appropriate to look at the real, or after inflation, interest rate rather than the actual, or nominal, rate.
The article has proven to be one of our most popular.
On this page, we regularly update the charts provided in the article so readers can easily access a measure of the trend in the real home loan interest rate. For further explanation on the interpretation of the charts, refer to “Are interest rates really low?”.