Official Cash Rate Duly Cut

The Official Cash Rate was duly cut last week, as was widely expected, by 0.50%. Home loan floating interest rates have followed suit. See the Reserve Banks Statement here.

The permutations of the move are still flowing through the home loan interest rate market.

Westpac Bank has followed up their cuts to home loan fixed interest rates from two weeks ago, with further cuts this morning. 6 months fixed now sits at 5.59%, pretty cheap money by New Zealand standards.

As an aside, we are working with some USA based clients at present, and one does a double take when one see’s a revolving credit facility on a rate of 2.74%.

Returning to life in New Zealand, all the major lenders appear to be back in the 95% lending market. One can but assume that they are of the belief that the property market is stable.

The median number of days taken to sell a property lengthened out to 58 in February. Compared with February last year, sales volumes were down 4.3%.