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Home loans / Repayment holiday

What’s a repayment holiday?

  • A repayment holiday is a break from your home loan direct debit request (DDR) repayments for a set period of between three to 12 months. It’s available for eligible CommBank home loans and allows you to use the additional available repayments you’ve made to put future repayments on hold, giving you the flexibility to direct your money to where it’s needed most.

How it works

  • You can apply for a repayment holiday for a set period of three up to 12 months.

    There are a few things to keep in mind:

    1. You’ll need to have sufficient money available in your redraw facility to cover your home loan’s Required Monthly Repayment Amount (RMRA) during the repayment holiday period. Your redraw balance amount must have sufficient funds to cover the term of the repayment holiday, plus one month's extra repayment – so if, for example, you’d like a repayment holiday period of three months, then your redraw balance should cover at least four months of your RMRA.
    2. Once the repayment holiday period is set up, we’ll deduct your RMRA from your redraw balance and your access to redraw will be suspended. You’ll need to monitor your redraw balance to ensure the RMRA can be met each month. If insufficient funds are held in your redraw, you’ll need to either contact us to have your DDR repayments reinstated, marking the end of your repayment holiday period, or make alternative arrangements to meet the RMRA via manual payment into the loan to avoid your loan falling into arrears and Late Payment Fees. 
    3. Your RMRA may change to keep you on track to pay off your home loan within the agreed term. This can occur for a variety of reasons, such as changes to your loan balance, interest rate changes or product type changes. If this is the case, we’ll let you know even if you are within your repayment holiday period. This may mean that when your DDR repayment is reinstated, the amounts debited may be higher than when you commenced the repayment holiday period. Your DDR repayment frequency will be the same as it was before the repayment holiday started. 

    You can contact us at any time to end your repayment holiday period earlier and have your DDR repayment reinstated or if you close your nominated DDR account during the repayment holiday period. 

Before you apply

  • Before applying for a repayment holiday, check to see if you’re paying more than your RMRA. If so, consider reducing this to the minimum as this may free up enough cash to help with your circumstances.

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  • If you’d like to apply for a repayment holiday, complete this checklist first to see if you’re eligible:

    • Check you have an eligible home loan. A repayment holiday is only available for variable rate home loans (Standard Variable Rate, Extra, No Fee or Economiser/Rate Saver home loans).
    • Check your repayment type. Only home loans with a repayment option of Principal and Interest repayments are eligible.
    • Check you have enough money available in your redraw facility. Your available redraw balance amount must have sufficient funds to cover the term of the repayment holiday, plus one month's extra repayment. If your available redraw balance isn’t enough to cover the minimum repayment holiday term of three months, don’t forget that you can still access these additional payments to cover your home loan repayments.  Keep in mind if you choose to withdraw money from your available redraw, your home loan balance, repayments, the amount of interest you’re charged, and the time it takes to pay off your loan will increase. 

    You can easily check all this information online in NetBank.

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How to apply

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