Mortgage stress seems less severe than previously made out to be, a survey by mortgage broker Mortgage Choice has found.
Out of more than 1000 respondents to an online survey, 72 per cent said they were not planning to decrease their repayments to match recent rate cuts.
"This surprised me," Mortgage Choice managing director Paul Lahiff said yesterday. "It seems that the reports about mortgage stress are a little overdone."
The survey, which was held in early November, found that job security has overtaken interest rates as the main concern of respondents with a mortgage. Most people expect a further rate cut in the next 12 months.
Less than half of people (42 per cent) said they would make changes to their savings as a result of the credit crunch, with 10 per cent planning to take out some or all of their savings with the objective to re-invest it somewhere else.
Queenslanders are most likely to review their savings, while Tasmanians were least likely to do so.
The survey also showed that people are less likely to buy a property, but still 31 per cent of respondents expect to do so in the next 12 months. A majority of people said the credit crunch has made property seem safer than shares.
