With hundreds of different home loan products on offer at any one time, it’s important that as a borrower, you’re regularly examining your options.

There are multiple benefits to refinancing that could potentially save you money and offer more flexibility.

Here are 5 beneifts of refnancing.

Save money

Regardless of the interest rate cycle, there is always the possibility of being able to find a more attractive home loan. If you’ve been with your current lender for a number of years, it’s likely a good time to start comparing home loan products.

While refinancing to a lower interest rate is one way to save money, it’s also worth looking at different options such as fixed versus variable rates, or even interest-only payments depending on your circumstances. Many lenders will also offer attractive introductory rates to new borrowers.

Save time

Finding a slightly better home loan product can not only save you money in the short term, but it could help cut down on the time it will take you to pay off your mortgage.

If you’re paying less interest, you could potentially put those additional funds back into paying down the principal. Which will reduce the length of time you’ll be paying a mortgage. Similarly, more flexible home loan products with different features might give you the same sort of ability to save money and time.

Over a long period of time, the amount of interest you’ll pay on your home loan will be high, so the sooner you can pay it down the better.

Access equity

One of the most powerful elements of owning any type of property is that you can access the equity that has built up over the years.

By refinancing, you’re able to tap into the equity and use it for other purposes, in particular, as the deposit for another property. This is how you’re able to use just a single deposit to build a portfolio of investment properties over time.

Debt consolidation

A great way to lower your interest expenses is to consolidate any high-interest debts into one lower-interest loan. This might mean using a home loan to help reduce the interest payments on things like unsecured loans.

Given that home loans usually have lower interest rates than things like credit cards, by refinancing you’re able to save even more money that can then in turn be used to pay down your home loan.

Improved loan features

These days, home loans come with a host of great features that allow you to save money and also give you a lot more flexibility. When you refinance, you can typically look for home loan products with the right type of features for your personal circumstances.

Some of the most useful features are offset accounts or redraw facilities. An offset account acts like a transaction account and allows you to save on interest, while still giving you full access to your funds when you need them. It works by offsetting the principal component of your mortgage with the money in the offset account. You only pay interest on the difference.

A redraw facilty on the other hand, gives you the abilty to access any funds that you've paid towards your motgage above the minimum required.

There's also other different typoes of home loan features that you could consider such as fixed interest rates that can save you interest and add more secutiry around your repayments.