The Bank of New Zealand has fired its next shot in the battle for the lowest floating rate home loan, announcing cuts of up to 31 basis points on some of its loans.
Thursday, September 17th 2009, 4:37PM
It is claiming the lowest variable rate in the market, by taking 26 points off its TotalMoney rate, setting at it 5.59%.
This is 16 points lower than what ASB Bank is offering. However the two loan products are not directly comparable as TotalMoney is an offset account.
BNZ's other home loan products (GlobalPlus, Rapid Repay, Standard and FlyBuys) are now all priced at 5.99%.
This puts them well below comparable loans from other major banks.
However, according to www.mortgagerates.co.nz, a number of other lenders including BankDirect, Kiwibank, NZ Home Loans, Silver Fern, Sovereign and PSIS have cheaper floating rates.
BNZ director retail Chris Bayliss says: "Over the past year we've reduced our variable loan rates by 4.90% to ensure that we offer New Zealanders competitive rates which will enable them to reduce the principle on their loan at a quicker rate."
On 18 September 2009 at 9:15 am Darcy Ungaro said:
Great to see BNZ offering an offset mortgage account. I am a mortgage adviser and believe that this type of facility would work well with most Kiwi's. Only problem with it is that it is a little bit different, and in order for it to take off, the public needs to be educated on how it can work for them - individual advice needs to be given to each borrower. Perhaps there is a value add that mortgage advisers can provide to BNZ and it's customers??
On 18 September 2009 at 11:17 am James said:
BNZ doesn't deal with brokers so mortgage advisers won't be recommending anything of BNZ to their customers. But I agree an offset loan is a great product but not widely understood by the average Kiwi
The above graph shows the journey in which the home loan interest rates have taken over the past couple of years compared with the five-year median.
With the considerable cuts to long-term fixed rates this month and the increases we saw to floating rates in June this year, the yield curve is starting to show signs of flattening out.
Disclaimer: Every possible effort has been made to keep the information in the rates tables as accurate as possible, however, neither the publishers of Mortgage Rates nor anyone engaged to compile these tables accept any liability for inaccuracies or any loss suffered as a result. It is strongly advised that readers check loan details directly with the provider concerned.