The surge in mortgage growth of the past two years is quickly beginning to recede, with annual growth in mortgage stock slowing to its lowest level for a year in February.
But meanwhile business lending, which was crushed by the pandemic, is now growing at its fastest clip since the onset of Covid.
New Reserve Bank sector lending figures show that in February total housing lending stock - the country's mortgage pile, if you will - grew by about by $1.5 billion (0.4%), which was down on the $1.7 billion (0.5%) increase reported in January.
There's an argument to say that if you take out months that have been in some way affected by lockdowns or Covid restrictions, then you have to go back to 2018 to find month on month growth rates as slow. The only exception to that is arguably the post-lockdown June 2020 month, which also saw 0.4% growth.
Either way, annual growth in the country's mortgage stock continued to slow - down to 9.5%, following 10 months of double digit growth.
As at the end of February the mortgage pile (that's from both banks and non-bank lenders) stood at $334.1 billion, compared with $305.1 billion in February 2021. That's still a chunky addition to the pile over the course of 12 months, but the rate of growth has been slowing markedly in recent months - with month on month growth having dropped from at or near 1% each month in the first half of the year to the 0.4% seen in February.
As mentioned at the top, however, it's been a different theme developing in the business sector.
Annual business lending growth plunged into the negatives after the start of the pandemic, but is now very much on the up again, with the annual rate hitting +7.6% in February. That's the fastest pace of annual growth since July 2019. The pile of business lending stood at $125.4 billion at the end of the month - a new all time high.
Agricultural lending continues to languish though, falling at an annual rate of 1.3% in February (to $61.5 billion), which was the biggest annual drop seen since April of last year.
Dairy lending is continuing to drive the falls. The stock of dairy lending was down to $36.7 billion in February, some $1.9 billion - or 4.9% lower than in February 2021.
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