> As of a year ago, in total around 39% of all outstanding Australian residential loan balances were interest only. [1] For those that recall the US real-estate bubble, that's a terrifying figure; the US interest-only share of the market during the crazy years of the real-estate bubble was single digits (5-8%). Australia is currently taking action to try to counter this, which is rocking their market presently. [2]

At least for myself, I have an interest only loan; but it comes with an offset account. In a day-to-day sense it's not very different to a normal mortgage with free redraws. I think this gets confused when comparing stats across countries, as offset accounts in the USA don't seem to really exist (while they are common in Australia).