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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; no rate changes, but a key credit card shift, realestate listings up, Barfoot sales down, car sales down, swaps stable, NZD lower, and much more

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; no rate changes, but a key credit card shift, realestate listings up, Barfoot sales down, car sales down, swaps stable, NZD lower, and much more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here either.

EFFECTIVE CREDIT CARD RATE REDUCTIONS
ANZ is making major credit card interest rate changes. It is taking its standard Visa card which has a 20.95% interest rate and converting all clients to their Low Rate Visa card plan which has a 13.9% interest rate. Fees on these cards won't change but they are relatively low at $35/year. Two other banks have done this previously, ASB (13.5%) and Kiwibank (9.95%). Although not technically a product rate change, the effect is the same. It may reflect the strong competition that Buy-now, Pay-later systems are having on the credit card business.

PORTENT?
In real estate markets, new listings are starting to rise nationally on Realestate.co.nz suggesting the spring lift is in the air.

GRIM
But the end of winter has been tough for Auckland realtor Barfoots. Sales levels were grim in August with the lowest August volumes in nine years, but selling prices did remain steady.

GOING AFTER LOAN SHARKS
The Government is to mandate a daily interest rate cap on loans as part of a bid to crack down on loan sharks and predatory lending. But this cap will be 0.8% per day, and if it is simple interest will be 24% per month, 292% per year. It is not sure whether this includes fees or only applies to the interest rate. And it is not clear about whether flat interest schemes will be outlawed. There does seem to be a overall cap of 100% on the amount borrowed however. More details here.

RENTS RISING
Christchurch 3 bedroom house rents jumped to $440/week on average in August and back towards levels last seen in 2015. Auckland rents are back up to $660/week again and that is a record high. Wellington rents are at $620/week and well off it record in April of $667/week. This is data from the Tenancy Bond Service of MBIE.

A BUMPER MONTH
We are feeling pretty chuffed after our August readership numbers are in. We beat every readership and pages-of-content-delivered record we had with sky-high gains.

SATISFACTION SLIPPAGE
The latest Roy Morgan bank satisfaction numbers are in for the year to June and six of the nine largest banks recorded declines in satisfaction. The three banks with rising scores are TSB, Rabobank and SBS Bank. TSB and SBS Bank bookend the results. The biggest satisfaction declines were recorded by Co-operative Bank, Kiwibank, and BNZ. All the majors fell. And for the first time in quite a while, the NZ divisions of the Aussie banks mostly scored lower than their Aussie parents.

KIWIBANK EYES BOND OFFER
Westpac says it has been hired by Kiwibank to work alongside Kiwibank and BNZ on a potential NZ dollar, unsecured, unsubordinated, five-year fixed rate bond offer from the state owned bank to NZ institutional and retail investors.

VERY CHEAP MONEY
Such wholesale bonds give access to very cheap money with long commitments. Today Toyota Finance NZ borrowed $100 mln wholesale at just 1.73% for five years.

AN IMPROVING RESULT
The largest quarterly goods and services surplus on record at +AU$19.7 bln and a narrowing net income deficit to -AU$12.2 bln, contributed to Australia recording a +AU$7.5 bln current account surplus for the June quarter 2019. (The seasonally adjusted numbers are different.) In the full year to June, Australia ran a -AU$12 bln deficit, or less than 1% of GDP.

SALES DECLINING
New car sales dipped -1.5% in August from a year ago, continuing the trend of declines. In fact, these results have fallen year-on-year in ten of the past twelve months. But SUV sales were up +6.0% year on year, taking 67% of all car sales. Commercial vehicle sales fell -10% year-on-year, the larges such decline since December 2009. We will get data for used imports in a day or so. That sector is also going through a sales downturn.

SWAP RATES STABLE
Wholesale swap rates are marginally firmer for the long tenors today by unchanged for the short ones. The 90-day bank bill rate is unchanged at 1.19%. Australian swap rates are a little softer across the board. The Aussie Govt 10yr is up +5 bps at 0.94%. The China Govt 10yr is up +2 bps to 3.09%, while the NZ Govt 10 yr is down -2 bps to 1.08%. The UST 10yr yield is up +1 bp to 1.53%.

NZ DOLLAR TESTS ITS CYCLE LOWS
The Kiwi dollar lower and now at 62.8 USc. That is very close to the 62.6 USc it got down to in September 2015. Prior to that, the lowest the Kiwi dollar has been was ten years ago. Against the Aussie we are little-changed at 93.8 AU cents. Against the euro we are unchanged at 57.4 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 at 68.5.

BITCOIN FIRM
Bitcoin has stayed higher after last night broad rise and now at US$10,343, a rise of +5.8% since this morning. The bitcoin price is charted in the currency set below.

This chart is animated here.

Daily exchange rates

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End of day UTC
Source: CoinDesk

Daily swap rates

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Opening daily rate
Source: NZFMA
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18 Comments

Again: listings mean nothing and get pulled off when buyers will not cough up to seller expectations. Sales count and they are only rising compared to 2017 but are down on 2018. Reality is sales are level with 2010

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wow, the dollar has gone back to late 2015.. and our exports are still record high... so just not sure about the stress of cutting interest rates

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Mate told me today that the NZ apple industry has rolled, unsold apples everywhere. Will try and get confirmation, but doesn't look pretty if he's right, containers of apples sitting in offshore ports with no buyers.

Off course with all the cheap money about we have grown a lot of apples in the last ten years.

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Starting to sound like quite a few exports starting to form cracks.

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Weakening yuan pile pressure on Highly indebted Chinese property developers

https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3025256/weakening-yuan-piles-pres…

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wow... auckland consents up MORE than initially forecast!!!!

can someone please tell me how are these numbers being achieved???? I know migration numbers are up, but as i have been stating there are clearly a shift from chefs/taxi drivers to tradies.. i think this is what we wanted and its happening

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/115494838/homebuilding-forecasts-in-au…

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Planned in 2016, found site in 2017, finance 2018, consents gained in 2019.
A consent remains current for two years and easy to extend. A high amount of these consents won't be built if the economy is looking shakey.

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But what happens to all the land that’s been zoned, pipes and cables laid, with kerb and channel formed? Approach the residents of a half finished sub division and ask them if they want to buy the title to the empty section next door at a good price? Help them knock down the fence in the middle.

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Garbage. MBIE need to get out of their ivory towers. A quick glance at their report suggests they haven't even considered the ability of people to pay the prices that dwellings need to be sold for.
How does their forecast of rising house building in Auckland marry with the Anz confidence survey?

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The report fineprint says:

' BRANZ has assumed a direct relationship between household formation and demand for new construction'

So it takes no account of commercial feasibility.
As I said- garbage

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Im more focused on the CCCs, which is the highest it's been in a very long time..

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Have been in Oz for 5 weeks, trying to avoid the winter (fail) but have enjoyed watching Scott Morrison in action. He's a busy man with trips to Timor, Bairritz & Tuvalu all within a week. He seems to have settled the Lib/Nats back into power with Labor still in shock & denial - & turmoil in NSW. Morrison strikes me as a pretty straight shooter & does not come across as a man with only a one seat majority in the house, but the way Labor are currently tracking over there, they're already talking him up as a two-term PM. From my humble view (mostly via the media - and there's plenty of it) it looks like the state governments are the one's letting the team down with corruption rife in NSW & Queensland & with Victoria now declared a socialist state.
Getting home yesterday didn't seem quite so hard - apart from today's weather.

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they were building their hopes on sky high Iron ore prices.. now that it as scaled back to bear territory, it must be freaking them out....

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Average Joe Blogs in Oz doesn't think that recessions apply to them. It's the lucky country, untouchable.....

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Yeah has Mr Blogs an Co worked out that they Chinese have stopped buying. All down to that Mr Trump and his silly trade war.

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As we are stable or up against most other currencies , surely it is the USD that is up , rather than the NZD is down ?

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Down vs USD. Down vs AUD. Down vs EUR. Down vs CHF. Down vs JPY. Down vs SGD. Seems fair to say that NZD is down.

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BBC Brexit: Boris Johnson faces showdown in Parliament (You can hear Boris being drowned out by the Stop Brexit protesters in the background).
"Rebel Tories and Labour MPs are planning a bill to stop the UK leaving the EU on 31 October without a deal.
Mr Johnson said he did not want an election, but progress with the EU would be "impossible" if the MPs win".
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49560557

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