OCR preview - RBNZ has more cuts and work to do
Consensus among the country’s main banks is the OCR will be cut to 3.75% on Wednesday but after that all eyes will be on the RBNZ’s Monetary Policy Statement outlining its forecast.
Consensus among the country’s main banks is the OCR will be cut to 3.75% on Wednesday but after that all eyes will be on the RBNZ’s Monetary Policy Statement outlining its forecast.
The Commerce Commission is sticking to its recommendation that mortgage advisers should have to submit three “actual offers” to every mortgage applicant, the Finance and Mortgage Advisers Association of New Zealand (FAMNZ) says.
ASB Bank looks to be making up for lost time in the mortgage market with its home loan book swelling by $2.28 billion in the six months ended Dec 31.
One of the possibilities of open banking includes the ability for borrowers to get pre-approval for a home loan in 10 minutes and to make instant low-cost payments.
A month is a long time in the home loan world. Between November and December last year new mortgage lending switched swiftly from floating to six-month terms by borrowers taking out new loans.
Some financial advice providers are taking an overly conservative approach to meeting their regulatory obligations, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) says.
The question hovering on mortgage advisers’ lips is when they should start pointing clients to longer fixed interest terms on their mortgages.
Mortgage arrears are increasing – up 7% year on year in December, the latest Centrix data show.
A surge in business for mortgage advisers in the first month of this year has come off the back of nearly 9,000 new property listings, the highest since January 2015.
TSB Bank is calling for changes to bank capital rules and other regulatory changes to create a level playing field for the smaller banks so they can better compete against the big four Australian-owned banks.
The chair of parliament's finance and expenditure committee (FEC) changed last week without any formal announcement or explanation, casting doubt on whether the government's intentions to make meaningful changes to the banking sector.
Nearly a quarter of all mortgages loaned in December went to borrowers switching banks – an increase of 94.8% over a year.
Reserve Bank chief economist Paul Conway has added his voice to those warning that interest rates, and therefore mortgage rates, aren't likely to return to pre-covid levels.
Borrowers will save on average between $300 and $460 a month on their mortgage repayments when the OCR drops to 3.25% by the middle of the year.
Over the past three years higher interest rates have translated in dollar terms to a $10 billion increase in mortgage borrowing costs.
As business confidence improves, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon wants the RBNZ to take more frequent OCR decisions.
The country’s outstanding mortgage book is the shortest it has been in 13 years.
Property investor mortgage borrowers are worried interest rates will rise this year, and this cycle of the market won’t result in firm house price increases.
While borrowers have flocked to floating to one year fixed term home loan rates over the past year in anticipation of interest rate cuts one mortgage broker urges his clients to think about the ramifications carefully.
New regulations dictating how open finance works for the banking sector could be in place by the end of the year with advisers encouraged to start thinking about how developments could change the way they do business.