Westpac has increased its main variable, or floating, interest rate by 15 bps to 5.75% from 5.60% effective Saturday, September 29, 2012 for new customers. It will apply to existing customers from October 20, 2012.
The bank has a standard variable rate of 6.24% which is unchanged.
However, its Choices Everyday rate has been its flagship variable rate, designed for most residential customers who have a floating rate mortgage.
Although Westpac's Choices Everyday is a revolving credit facility with your home loan and everyday banking in one account, Westpac pitched it as their main variable rate offer.
An increase in mortgage rates at this time goes against the recent trend of falling fixed-term rates which have been announced over the past week by a number of institutions.
You can find all the latest rates and recent changes here »
After this increase, Westpac no longer has the best variable rate of any bank, which was a feature of their rate offers. The lowest carded variable rate is now offered by both SBS/HBS and Kiwibank at 5.60%.
Data published today by the Reserve Bank shows that in August borrowers were still shifting away from variable interest rate home loans, a trend that started about six months ago as banks focussed their sharpest rates on their fixed rate offers and borrowers responded.
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Mortgage choices involve making a significant financial decision so it often pays to get professional advice. A Roost mortgage broker can be contacted by following this link »
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9 Comments
Strange. Over the past 3 years, the "hottest topics" on interest.co.nz have been property related. Yet, have never once seen any examination or discussion of the effect of the "auction method" of selling houses versus the "for sale" method. In my experience of attending auctions, if the real-estate agent can get 3 or more genuinely interested parties into a room together and conduct a "sudden death" auction and get some price tension going, the eventual buyer (if very keen) will have been sucked into an "emotional roller-coaster ride", inevitably paying much more than market price. Sometimes well over the market-price. Yet that sale becomes the bench-mark from that point on.
if the real-estate agent can get 3 or more genuinely interested parties into a room together and conduct a "sudden death" auction and get some price tension going, the eventual buyer (if very keen) will have been sucked into an "emotional roller-coaster ride", inevitably paying much more than market price. Sometimes well over the market-price. Yet that sale becomes the bench-mark from that point on.
Let's say the overpaid price was deliberately engineered to revalue surrounding properties belonging to related party owners.
The simple reason why estate agents like auctions is that their best chance to force a sale, and a sale equals payment for the agent. $100K difference in purchase price is massive to the vendor but peanuts to the agent's overall payment. This is why a sale, any sale, is always great news for the agent, despite how crestfallen they may appear to be if an auction fails to deliver.
If The Block taught us anything, it taught us that an auction's outcome is not always champagne and roses. These were the 4 highest-profile, primetime marketed houses in NZ. Only one of the houses really delivered on the riches promised by an auction.
Recently attended an auction in a location we were thinking of buying in. In response to asking where in the multi-auction programme did the place we were interested appear, agent replied almost a dozen properties would be auctioned in the first hour. At the end of first hour 4 properties had been auctioned. It was like sitting in a room watching teeth being pulled. When they had a short break, we left.
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