A review of things you need to know before you go home on Thursday; factories happy, rents rising, consumers very happy, farms sell well, swap rates fall sharply, Kiwi dollar flat-lines

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
ASB, Sovereign and NZ Home Loans all made the same move, matching ANZ and Kiwibank in the two year fixed space. Of more interest, TSB Bank dropped its one year fixed rate to 5.39% which is a market leading offer. But that offer is only currently available on their Facebook page.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
There were no changes today.

MANUFACTURERS HAPPY
Expansion in the manufacturing sector lifted during the last month of 2014, according to the latest BNZ - BusinessNZ PMI. The seasonally adjusted PMI for December was 57.7.  This was 2.1 points higher than November, and a positive end to the year for the sector.

RENTS ON THE MOVE HIGHER
There have been double digit increases in rents in a number of key markets in December. The rental housing market is tightening as the number of new lettings has declined.

OFF THE AGENDA?
Bank economists have now given up expecting the OCR will rise in the foreseeable future. Now they say no changes are likely for a long time.

MORE LEGS
The latest ANZ Roy Morgan survey shows confidence has jumped back up to its highest level since August last year. These elevated levels suggest that the domestic expansion has more legs, says ANZ. 

FARMS SELLING WELL
There were 220 farms sold in December capping a year when +6% more units sold in 2014 than the previous year. Actually there were a few less dairy units sold in 2014 than 2013, but there were more grazing units changing hands.

10 ACRE BLOCKS STILL SELLING WELL ALSO
Lifestyle block sales also grew in 2014 to 6,622, boosted by a good December of 611 transactions.

BIGGER LOANS
Mortgage approvals actually fell to their lowest holiday levels since 2010 in the week between Christmas and the New Year. But since then they have bounced to a slightly higher level than the same week a year ago. Values are growing much faster than approval numbers, unsurprisingly.

S&P BANNED
Standard & Poor’s agreed to be suspended from rating the biggest part of the commercial-mortgage bond market and pay almost US$80 million to American state and federal authorities over claims it bent criteria to win business. S&P misled investors about the methodology it used in 2011 to rate eight commercial-mortgage backed securities, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement today.

WHOLESALE RATES
The local swap rates fell heavily again today, down about -5 bps today across the curve. The 90 day bank bill rate was unchanged at 3.67%.

NZ DOLLAR STEADY
Check our real-time charts here. The NZ dollar is basically unchanged today although we did slip below 50p to the UKP. It is now at 75.6 USc, at 93.4 AUc, and the TWI is now at 78.9.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.