PHOTO: Mortgages
Mortgage lending activity rose again in February, with the growth in loans to first home buyers with LVRs >80% far outstripping overall volumes. However, the banks are still pretty cautious about who they lend to (in terms of debt servicing ability), while the LVR speed limits aren’t yet in sight either. So it seems unlikely that the Reserve Bank would be especially concerned yet. Meanwhile, the rekindling of last year’s mortgage rate wars will probably set the scene for more rises in borrowing flows over the next month or two.
CoreLogic Senior Property Economist Kelvin Davidson writes:
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has reported that there was $4.8bn of mortgage lending in February, up by about $130m from a year earlier. That extended the run of increases to 11 months (and the 13th in the past 14 months), with larger average loans rather than a rise in the number of loans being the key driver. By borrower type, the increase was again driven by owner-occupiers, with investors still showing broadly flat volumes year-on-year
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