A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; 'obscene' house price jumps, food prices stable, moderate rent rises, RBA grumpy, swaps stable, NZD holds, & more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report here today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
The Bank of India has launched a 4 and 5 year TD offer at 1.60%. Also, BNZ is advising that they are closing their personal on-call account as at June 30, 2021. It is not surprising as they only offer 0.05% pa interest on that account.

'BUOYANT' RUN CONTINUES
The housing market had its best May sales volumes in three years with Auckland having its strongest May sales in five years, according to the latest REINZ data. National median prices are up a massive +32% in a year, Auckland median prices are up +27%. Never has money fallen out of the sky so fast for homeowners as in the past 12 months. There has never been anything like the +$200,000 annual gain for the national median over the past year, nor the +$243,000 gain in Auckland. It has been called 'obscene' by Infometrics. Much of rise is because housing supply is so low. at a time when demand is so high (The 'war on poverty' is being lost at a remarkable rate.)

FOOD PRICES RISE MODESTLY
Food prices are stable. They were +1.8% higher in May from a year ago, and this rate of increase continues a pattern of smaller increases in 2021 than 2020. The only category of food where there have been significant rises has been for eat-out meals (+12.3% pa).

RENTS RISING
Rents are rising faster than food, but nowhere near as fast as house prices - at least according to Stats NZ's rental price indexes. They peg the national increase at +4.5% pa (the fastest rise in more than two years) and the Auckland increase at just +2.5% in a year (and the fastest rise in 18 months).

TOP RANK?
Recruiting firm Randstad surveyed 4000 applicants to find that the top ranking employers in Banking/Financial Services were Kiwibank, BNZ, then ANZ. For professional services the top raking was KPMG, then Deloitte followed by PwC.

AUSSIE HOUSE PRICES RISE
There was housing data out as well in Australia today, but only for March. These official stats show their indexed house prices rose +7.5% over the past year with Sydney up +8.0%, Melbourne up +5.9% and Brisbane up +7.5%. The total value of all their residential dwellings is now AU$8.2 tln, a massive +AU$1 tln in twelve months or a +14% rise in a year.

HOLDING BACK
The RBA released the minutes of its dull June 1 meeting. But there was an interesting tidbit in this record of those discussions. The RBA wants to see quicker wage growth to help spur inflation towards target. But they are seeing firms acting to not raise wages by adopting non-wage measures to attract and retain staff, such as one-off bonuses and more flexible working arrangements. Some firms were also opting to ration output because of labour shortages, rather than pay higher wages to attract new workers, they said.

GOLD SOFTISH
Compared to this time yesterday, the gold price is down -US$3 and now at US$1863/oz in early Asian trading. It closed in New York earlier today at US$1866/oz and in London at the same level.

EQUITY MARKETS FIRM
The S&P500 closed with an end of session firming, up +0.2% after being lower for almost all the day. Tokyo has opened with a +0.7% rise in early trade, but Hong Kong has returned from is holiday weekend in a bad mood, down -1.1%. Shanghai's mood isn't much better, down -0.8%. The ASX200 is also back from holiday and in early afternoon trade is up +0.9%. The NZX50 Capital Index is up +0.7% in late trade. Heavy-hitter FPH is up +5.6% today, and ATM is recovering +5.6% as well. NZM is sinking +2.7% today as one of the largest decliners.

SWAP & BONDS YIELDS STABLE
We don't have today's closing swap rates yet. If there are significant changes again today, we will update this item. They probably held. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 0.32%. The Australian Govt ten year benchmark rate is down -1 bp at 1.45%. The China Govt ten year bond is up +1 bp at 3.16%. The New Zealand Govt ten year is unchanged at 1.65% and now below the earlier RBNZ fix of 1.67% (+1 bp). And the US Govt ten year is up +2 bps to 1.48% but was unable to hold 1.50% earlier.

NZ DOLLAR UNCHANGED
The Kiwi dollar is still holding at 71.4 USc. Against the Aussie we are little-changed at 92.7 AUc. Against the euro we are still at 58.9 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is still at 73.2.

BITCOIN STAYS UP
The bitcoin price is still rising and is now at US$40,250 and up another +2.6% from this time yesterday although most of that happened last night. Volatility in the past 24 hours has been high at +/- 3.0%.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

Keep ahead of upcoming events by following our Economic Calendar here ».