Despite the Reserve Bank unexpectedly bumping up the OCR by 25 basis points last week there hasn’t been a flurry of activity on the home loan front.
Thursday, February 5th 2004, 9:33AM
Despite the Reserve Bank unexpectedly bumping up the OCR by 25 basis points last week there hasn’t been a flurry of activity on the home loan front.
Among the big players (ie: the banks) there have only been movements from ASB, ANZ and HSBC. The former two (the two As) have their floating rate up 0.25% to 7.50% each.
HSBC on the other hand moved its one year rate up and its three year rate down.
Amongst the non-bank lenders we saw moves upwards in fixed rates for Cairns Lockie/eMortgage, General Finance, GEM and NZ Mortgage Funds. (The only outlier in here being the Cairns Lockie/eMortgage put their five year rate down).
AXA put up its floating, six month and one year rates, as did Pacific Home Loans.
What’s the best deal?
Economists are urging a little caution at the moment as the OCR move was a surprise and the data is quite volatile at present.
"Wholesale interest rates already have built into them further OCR rises to 5.75% – we view it as unlikely that the OCR will exceed that and that it could finish up lower than that," Westpac says.
It says fixing for up to two years is likely to have the lowest borrowing cost.
