They've been threatening to do if for a while now, but in December the first home buyers cracked the quarter share mark of the total new mortgage advances as they took up a record monthly share of mortgage money.
This is according to latest Reserve Bank (RBNZ) figures.
The $1.335 billion advanced to the first home buyers in December 2023 gave the FHBs grouping a 25.2% share of the total monies advanced, up from 23.8% in November and representing a high water mark in a data series that's now been running since 2014.
However, it needs saying that the overall total in December of $5.304 billion was as soggy as the real estate data for the month had suggested it would be.
The December total was up on the $5.121 billion figure for December 2022, but that figure was actually the lowest December total since 2017.
Additionally, according to RBNZ's seasonal adjustment the December 2023 figure was down by 2.2% when compared with the November 2023 figures. And to give further context, the December 2023 total compared with a total of over $7.9 billion advanced in December 2021 and over $9.6 billion in December 2020.
Just recently there had been some signs of the long dormant investors not so much awakening, but certainly opening one eye - perhaps in anticipation of the ultimately realised National Party success (and therefore investor friendly policies) in the October election. However, in December investors' share of the overall advances dropped to 16.8% from 17.4% in November.
The $894 million advanced to investors in December 2023 represented the smallest numerical amount advanced to that grouping for a December month since the beginning of this data series in 2014.
It had been a long established pattern that investors out-borrowed FHBs - at times by a much as a four-to-one ratio - but now since April 2022 the amount borrowed by the FHBs has exceeded that by the investors every month.
In terms of historical levels, in the 2014-15 period the FHBs at times had an under 10% share of monthly mortgage figures, while at around the same time the investors on occasions took over a third of the total advances.
It will be interesting to see if confirmation of policies such as the reintroduction of interest deductibility, along with the strong recent increases in rentals, do prompt renewed interest from investors in coming months.
Perhaps the December 2023 month may prove to be the high point for FHB in terms of overall share. Time will tell.
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