Home loan rates fall again
Photo:
AFP
Westpac is cutting some of its home loan rates and slightly increasing one other.
The bank said it would reduce its one-year rate to 4.89 percent, a drop of six basis points.
Its three-year rate will lift by four basis points to 4.99 percent.
The six-month rate drops by 20 basis points to 5.29 percent.
The bank's general manager of product, sustainability and marketing, Sarah Hearn, said the rates would be available on Friday.
The one-year rate is the joint lowest in the market, tied with Kiwibank.
ANZ, ASB and BNZ are offering 4.89 percent for 18 months, while Westpac is still offering 4.95 percent for that term.
Swap rates have fallen significantly from the start of the year, although they have started to lift a little more recently, on expectations that the Reserve Bank might be near the bottom of its official cash rate cutting cycle.
BNZ chief economist Mike Jones said the fact that the decision this time went to a vote was one factor that illustrated that.
One member of the monetary policy committee voted against the decision to cut the official cash rate at the most recent update.
"The fact you had one committee member wanting to pause for a meeting - you've got to add that to some of the comments from [committee] members at or after the decision around where we might be in relation to the cycle as a whole.
"It does tend to guide us to we're probably on the home stretch, whether it's one more, two more or even three more cuts, the messaging there tends to suggest we've had some big cuts to date and based on everything we know now we're getting towards the end - although there's always that optionality to respond to changing conditions and conditions are changing really rapidly at the moment."
He said BNZ's official forecast was still for two more cuts to an OCR low of 2.75 percent.
"When we look at the language from the bank combined with some of the data that has come in a bit firmer than we might have expected, that lead us to the risk of maybe just one but we still expect two. If that's right that means in terms of market interest rates, it's just the floating rates and the shorter term rates that have that much further to fall from here. We might getting close to or at the bottom for some of those longer term interest rates."
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