The increasing heat in the housing market is being demonstrated in the latest home lending figures.
According to Reserve Bank sector credit figures for January, released today, the amount loaned on residential property climbed by some NZ$952 million in the month, to a new total of NZ$178.66 billion.
The monthly rise was in dollar terms the most for nearly five years, dating back to the last housing boom. While the year-on-year increase of 4% was the highest in exactly four years.
During the month agricultural lending rose slightly to NZ$49.81 billion, but showed a strong 4.8% rise for the year.
Business lending also increased slightly, to NZ$79.05 billion, but the annual rate of increase, at 2.2%, was the smallest for 11 months.
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5 Comments
The Credit Ponzi Scheme is alive and kicking, Annual nominal GDP is up no more than 4%, say $8 billion, easily outstripped by credit growth of over $20 billion.
Central Govt. $10billion
Households $7billion
Agriculture $2.3billion
Business $1.6billion
Local Government ?
So debt is growing at almost three times nominal GDP, what happened to the deleveraging that was supposed to be the reason for the soft economy? Another year of this and things will get very ugly; ugly international position = rising interest rates = current account deficit blow out = dollar colapse = higher unemployment and so on. John Key will be saying "well no one could have forseen this", wonder if he's had a read of the S&P report.
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