After a “constructive meeting” with new Commerce and Consumers Affairs Minister Scott Simpson, FAMNZ country manager Leigh Hodgetts says he seems to understand the Commerce Commission’s insistence on mortgage advisers presenting three completed offers to borrowers will create chaos.
The Reserve Bank has bowed to pressure from the Commerce Commission, the banks and submitters to parliament’s banking inquiry and will conduct a review of its bank capital requirements.
A switch has been flipped for mortgage borrowers with the two-year 4.99% interest rate the main banks are now offering.
Westpac gave an apparently contradictory answer as to why it was so slow to pass on the Reserve Bank’s interest rate cut last month to parliament’s finance and expenditure committee’s banking inquiry.
Switching to a new loan provider is still proving popular for mortgage borrowers.
The country’s biggest adviser network NZFSG says banks are acutely aware of pain points for advisers.
Mortgage advisers have a lot more power than they realise when it comes to banks pushing out mortgage application times.
While the economy took its first step into recovery and ended 2024 on a better note, there are still pockets of significant weakness.
Compared to other countries, New Zealand’s banks infighting is mainly on cashbacks rather than interest rates in the mortgage sector.
New Zealander’s reliance on property capital gains in the mid-single digits is at an end.
After some catch-up in January, mortgage advisers say turn around times for home loan applications have again reached the “train wreck” stage they were at in October.
More than half of Kiwis under 25 think it is acceptable to inflate their income on mortgage and consumer credit loan applications.
The cost to a bank of using mortgage advisers to originate mortgages is marginal compared to the cost of running its own proprietary origination operation, according to Kiwibank chief executive Steve Jurkovich.
Heartland Bank is extending its reverse mortgage offering to include a kind of bridging finance for those wishing to buy a unit in a retirement village.
The Reserve Bank’s capital requirements and other regulatory changes have been causing a significant drag on bank lending, according to accounting firm KPMG’s latest survey of financial institutions.
Although fixed interest rates for mortgages are declining, borrowers still opted overwhelmingly for floating and short-term rates up to one year in January.
A mortgage adviser has reimbursed $5,556 in marketing and legal costs to a couple who complained to Financial Services Complaints Ltd (FSCL) that it took three months to find out they couldn’t get finance to buy a motel after they sold their house.
The scrap between mortgage advisers and the Commerce Commission over its insistence borrowers be presented with three actual offers from three different lenders has taken another turn.
NZFSG has partnered with specialist property investor insurer Initio.
For longer-term interest rates to fall the OCR would need to dip below 3%, ANZ says in its latest Property Focus report.
