HSBC has updated its website to reduce its special one year fixed mortgage rate by -6 basis points.
The new rate is 3.79%, equaling its own lowest-ever rate in the August to October period in 2016.
No other bank has come close to this level.
This means the HSBC Premier one year rate is -16 bps lower than the next lowest offer of 3.95%, a rate adopted by four other banks.
HSBC is the usual offerer of the lowest rate in the New Zealand home loan market.
It is also the lowest offerer in Australia where it has a 3.70% rate for one year fixed.
Over the past month, swap rates have been stable, especially at the short end. On Thursday the New Zealand one year swap rate ended at 2.04%. (In Australia it is at 1.97% and that difference reconciles the trans-Tasman offers for HSBC).
HSBC Premier has some strict conditions and not every borrower would qualify.
The criteria is:
• A minimum value of NZ$500,000 in home loans with HSBC in New Zealand (facility limit not outstanding balance); and/or
• A minimum value of NZ$100,000 in savings and investments with HSBC in New Zealand; and/or
• If you are an overseas HSBC Premier customer you will automatically qualify for Premier customer status in New Zealand.
Existing HSBC Premier customer must borrow at least an additional NZ$100,000 to qualify.
See all banks' carded, or advertised, home loan interest rates here.
Here is the full snapshot of the fixed-term rates on offer from the key retail banks.
| below 80% LVR | 6 mths | 1 yr | 18 mth | 2 yrs | 3 yrs | 4 yrs | 5 yrs |
| as at November 22, 2018 | % | % | % | % | % | % | % |
| ANZ | 4.99 | 3.95 | 4.85 | 4.29 | 4.49 | 5.55 | 5.69 |
 |
4.95 | 3.95 | 4.29 | 4.29 | 4.49 | 4.95 | 5.09 |
 |
4.99 | 4.15 | 4.79 | 3.99 | 4.49 | 5.19 | 5.39 |
 |
4.99 | 4.05 | 4.29 | 4.49 | 4.99 | 5.09 | |
 |
4.99 | 3.95 | 4.15 | 4.29 | 4.49 | 5.29 | 4.99 |
 |
4.50 | 4.10 | 4.29 | 4.35 | 4.49 | 4.99 | 5.15 |
 |
4.85 | 3.79
 |
3.85 | 4.19 | 4.69 | 4.99 | 5.29 |
 |
4.99 | 4.19 | 4.49 | 3.95 | 4.49 | 4.89 | 4.89 |
 |
4.85 | 3.95 | 4.19 | 4.19 | 4.49 | 4.95 | 4.99 |
In addition to the above table, BNZ has a fixed seven year rate of 5.95%.
And TSB still has a 10-year fixed rate of 6.20%.
Fixed mortgage rates
Select chart tabs
67 Comments
Depends who for.
I see less people able to win credit, meaning if all the successful loan applications from 2 years ago were processed now, many would be declined, many would get less money.
If there is this smaller pool of lendable/successful borrowers, expect the banks to pin their ears back, rates, fees, costs will all be pulled, pushed and probably squeezed.
My feeling is the "banks" really want credit growth to continue.
I hear of existing borrowers with capacity being offered great deals, and a selection of investment properties by-the-way..
On TV the FHB is being heavily advertised at, at TV news time, to hook em in.
Y what are you seeing?
even playing the music in slow motion presents an issue now Squishy... if the rate of accumulation of housing debt slows, that's it! ... There is still time a bit more time for the piper to play a bit longer, but we're into the last couple of pages of the music book.
Don't want to upset the editors again but it is worth looking at 'Are icebergs fluffy' DFA.
By "housing" you mean hocking off bits of land. Nobody buys for the quality of our damp Fletchers quality housing do they?
Tourism merely provides cheap hospitality jobs cleaning sheets in hotels.
Selling out the private parts for immediate paper money. Just like prostitution these "industries" are degrading and show how desperate our economy is.
TTP
Save a couple of hundred dollars a month as an off-set against the couple of thousand capital loss each month..
'Great news' said the patient to the doctor, 'So I'll get to keep the legs?'
'From the knees up!' said the doctor... 'But we will give you ice-cream in hospital while you recover'
'Wonderful news....' said the patient (very patient investor)
How about you learn the data properly though. NZ median SALES prices for REINZ is NOT the same as house prices going up on a like for like basis.
It very much depends on the mix of properties sold vs the base population of properties in an area
interesting article
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/news/article.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=12…
Probably very low. Their mortgage book in New Zealand is $1.7 bln. (Maybe about 4000 loans?) A number of years ago it was about $2.5 bln. They lost market share over a number of years and it shrank to under $1.5 bln. Recently it has stabilised and started to move up but not in any fast fashion. Today they have a 0.7% share (ie 0.007) of the $243 bln market that the ten banks listed above represent. Growth overall is about +5.8% pa and it has been at that level for about a year. (Pror to that it was higher.)
The ownership claim is a superficial misunderstanding. JPMorgan and HSBC have large custodial business divisions, holding shares for a very wide range of fund managers and other professional investors. As such, they are not the beneficial owners and don't have the rights of ownership. They are just custodians. (The RBNZ also has a custodian business and that causes some people to mistakenly claim they own some large NZ companies as well.) This is a misunderstanding based on an element of financial illiteracy by folks who conclusion-jump on how the custodial business works.
To investigate, we test the received belief that lower interest rates result in higher growth and higher rates result in lower growth. Examining the relationship between 3-month and 10-year benchmark rates and nominal GDP growth over half a century in four of the five largest economies we find that interest rates follow GDP growth and are consistently positively correlated with growth. If policy-makers really aimed at setting rates consistent with a recovery, they would need to raise them. We conclude that conventional monetary policy as operated by central banks for the past half-century is fundamentally flawed. Policy-makers had better focus on the quantity variables that cause growth.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916307510
I'd hardly call it prices slashed. NZ mortgage rates have still got far further to fall in comparison to other Western countries. Take the UK for example; HSBC are offering 1.74% for a 2 year fixed in the UK.
Take a look for yourself: https://personal.hsbc.co.uk/mortgages/our-rates/
Yep just goes to show how ripped off NZ customers are with mortgage rates. Thing is we can stave off a property crash simply by lowering mortgage rates to all people to pay off their mortgages.
If you check out other mortgage rates around the Western world you'll find that we are paying the highest mortgage rates.
Remember we have had 10 years of foreign buyers how could access incredibly low mortgage rates at around 1% so not surprisingly Auckland property prices went through the roof and local buyers couldn't keep up.
Here's another website for you to have a comparison. www.moneysupermarket.co.uk
That's right CJ, unlike a lot of other developped countries, NZ still has room to lower interest rates and that is one of the main reasons why I don't believe a house price "crash" is imminent here. A small drop of up to 10% nationally is quite possible but that is irrelevant after years of such strong growth.
I believe you are right Yvil. Things are pretty stable and far from being on the brink of disaster.
It's almost like everyone is being talked into a 'crisis imminent' mode so that things can correct a bit in a stable way. No risky mortgages and concentrating on consolidating positions. It's probably a good strategy thing to have this frame of mind although you wont get rich, just nice and comfortable.
" NZ still has room to lower interest rates"
Mathematically, yes, and that will happen. But economically? No.
The lower rates go, the further down the cul-de-sac of economic hardship we go. I know you don't see it that way, but the fact that we have had to follow the rest of the World into the monetary trap shows just how fragile our economy is at heart.
There won't be a Crash? I hope not, but as I see it it's on the cards now, and has been for the last 6 years since we let the property cat escape from the bag. The only difference now is that we are closer to that event occurring than we were in 2012.
I was wondering along these lines. Are we really ever likely to see that low of interest rates without the economic muscle of those countries compared? New Zealand as a country has to pay higher to compete for international lenders, as I understand it, which is why we won't see the same very low rates as stronger economies.
Or do people want the government to borrow money at a higher rate and lend it to them at a lower rate again? I.e. not standing on one's own two feet.
Actually David I think you're missing my point. It's more to do with WHY the suddenly flurry in banks reducing their mortgage rates? And no I didn't mean to imply that people were able to borrow cheaper mortgage rates from the UK. I know they can't because I tried that a number of years ago for buying property in NZ. However before the GFC most UK banks were lending for overseas buying mostly in Europe.
Though what is an undeniable fact is that we have had a lot of money pouring in from Asia for many years and not all by standard means (Shadow banking etc). Now that that tap has mostly been turned off, banks are now more concerned about how the property market is declining both here and in Oz.
Once negative equity take effect in a declining property market that resulting in people not being able to renew their mortgages and that's a far more explosive mix than just wholesale rates.
Conclusion: Banks are dropping their rates to allow buyers to continue to take out more debt reducing mortgage rates to keep property prices stable (Or stagnant in Auckland's case).
If the property market drops too rapidly that causes wide scale negative equity and eventual repossessions (mortgagees).
I see many articles in mainstream media regarding easing LVR restrictions .. :-o - because the home prices have stabilized .. because the credit growth rate has been slowed ( credit is still growing ). can understand why bank vying for loose LVR ..but why should reserve bank should do this ? what will be their motivation to loosen LVR
What is wrong with you? I mean other than it being 1am when you did your rant, unless of course you are an overseas troll, which is of course possible, given all your comments relate to UK stuff.
Even for you, this is pretty vitriolic. Greg raises a perfectly good point about what rationale there could be for the RBNZ to lift a prudent regulatory policy like speed limits.
Which bank do you represent Greg?
Gone too far Nic :-o what made u think that I'm a banker? I would like to be in their position though, seeing their power to control everything..
But I'm just a kid as u thought.. saving hard.. paying 33% tax on my 3% return on term deposits.
What these new low mortgage rates remind me of is the credit score system in the US. When there aren't enough people to lend to because their credit scores are too low they bump up all the credit scores so there's a larger market. It's almost like they are trying to keep existing mortgages ticking over (although I'm pretty sure internally it's all about market share).
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