A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; record low mortgage rate, record high migration, record high visitor levels, more SHA approvals, weak FHB assistance

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank today shook up the mortgage market by announcing a promotional 3.99% rate for a 1 year fixed home loan. This is the first time ever a commercial home loan rate has been below 4%. They also dropped their HBS branding.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Westpac have increased their 3 to 5 month term deposit offers from +5 to +50 bps. But they cut their 2 - 5 year term deposit rates by -5 to -15 bps.

THE PLACE TO BE I
The October migration hit a new high led by growth from China, India and Australia. And for the first time in more than 20 years, more people arrived permanently from Australia in the past year that left for 'the lucky country'. In fact, over the year the shift has averaged about 100 per week, the proverbial 'planeload'. In 1991 our population grew from natural and migration by 105,600. That is the all-time record. That high-point might be challenged this year although not the +3% relative increase. This year it is likely to be just over +2%.

THE PLACE TO BE II
We may be popular with students and other economic migrants. But we are really popular as a holiday destination. In the year to October we welcomed a staggering 3 million visitors, 230,000 in October alone. The annual data represents an impressive +8.6% rise. This is bringing growing stresses; in November and February is is virtually impossible to find last minute hotel accommodation in Auckland, for example, a fact that worries Air New Zealand. A hotel building boom in the Queen City is likely in a few years, office conversions maybe before then. (The rush to convert hotels to apartments is part of the stress.) The regions are benefiting too.

THE PLACE NOT TO BE
Snowstorms have swept across a vast area of north China, disrupting traffic, grounding flights and slowing down bullet trains in Beijing, Tianjin and Inner Mongolia. Six highways passing through the Chinese capital were closed. At Beijing Capital International Airport, 150 flights were canceled.

SHA EXPANSION
Nine new Special Housing Areas with a potential yield of 1100 new homes in Auckland were announced today. All up, these SHA's should deliver 48,000 new homes.

A MINNOW
The first home buyer program called Home Start wrote 287 Welcome Home loans in the July to September quarter, nationally. The housing minister thinks this is pretty good. (In the same period, banks approved 82,473 new loans.)

WHOLESALE RATES HOLD
Local wholesale swap rates are essentially unchanged today, although we are seeing a +1 bp rise for 7 and 10 yrs. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 2.87%.

NZ DOLLAR MOVES SIDEWAYS
Our currency has had a very quiet day although softening off as the day progresses. It is now at 65 USc, at 90.7 AUc and 61.4 euro cents. The TWI-5 is now at 71. Check our real-time charts here.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.