 Win your share of 5 million rand. Get a home loan and get one entry. Open a netbank account, move your salary and you'll get another 10 entries. Simply dial star 120 star 762 hash to enter. Make things happen. Netbank. We've recently experienced a number of interest rate hikes and this has an effect on the cost of living and people's ability to serve a state. How does this all affect people's ability to buy homes? Welcome back. This is quite a serious one. We've experienced a lot of interest rate hikes recently. Do you see more coming down the line? We are facing very tough economic conditions. In the last 24 months we've seen a total of 200 basis points hike in the interest rate. It's likely that we are at the back end of the rate cycle but that all depends on our ability to stimulate the economy and go to GDP and create jobs. The more people feel confident about the earnings potential the more likely they are to go back into the housing market and take on long term debt. How does this affect people's ability to buy homes or make that decision to buy a new home or just service their existing debt? The impact on an interest rate hike on a consumer is a direct one because the cost of servicing the existing debt then goes up immediately. But obviously the earnings haven't increased at the same rate so that puts a lot of pressure on the disposable income. A lot of tough choices need to be made so consumers need to prioritise and think about the things that are really important to them. So for example they need to reflect on things like how much they eat out and how much that costs them and if they had to maybe cut that down by one less. They could create more room for more important things such as paying off their bond. Also it's important that consumers do away and pay off debt that attracts high interest rates because at that point in time with further rate hikes it just continues to become an even bigger burden. So the reality is that we all are in this and we need to prioritise very smartly and I would definitely expect that consumers would see their homes as one of the top priorities that they need to consider. And are there ways that Netbank facilitates this kind of communication with their clients? Absolutely. We are constantly in contact with our customers on their rears and informing them of the importance of not defaulting. Because the minute you make one default you affect your ability to get further credit in future. So when things do improve you want to be in a situation where you can continue to be seen as a good rate payer and you want to also maintain your credit profile as well. So we always advise customers to say if you know that your difficulty is going to be long term rather approach us and sell your house so that we can preserve the value of it. If it's a short term one we can certainly restructure your accounts and help you pay a lot less over a short term period and then go back to your normal repayments. Yes, well thank you so much. You've definitely made me want to re-prioritise my spending. Managing your home repayment doesn't need to be a hassle. For more information visit www.netbank.co.z forward slash home loans. Thank you.