New Zealand's mortgage pile grew by the most it has in over two years during May, while the annual rate of growth was the highest for over a year.
According to new sector lending figures from the Reserve Bank (RBNZ), the pile of outstanding mortgages (and this includes both bank and non-bank lenders) rose to $360.603 billion in May.
That's up some $1.323 billion from April and was the largest monthly increase reported since April 2022.
It meant the annual growth rate of NZ's mortgage pile increased from 3.1% as of April 2024 to 3.3% as of May - and that was the biggest annual rise since March 2023.
However, if we want to look just at the banks, they actually saw an increase of $1.397 billion in the month, to a total of $354.658 billion, which was the largest monthly increase since January 2022. Non-bank lenders saw their outstanding mortgage stock decrease during the month to $5.945 billion from $6.019 billion.
In terms of total monthly new mortgage commitments for the month of May, these were $6.909 billion, which was the highest monthly total since March 2022.
First home buyers took $1.48 billion of the new mortgage money, which was a 21.4% share of the total, up from 21.3% in April.
But it was down on the 24.3% share in May 2023, according to the RBNZ monthly summary.
The share of new commitments to investors, which was $1.304 billion, decreased to 18.9%, down from 20.1% in April. However, this was an increase on May 2023, when the share to investors was 16.9%.
In terms of non-performing housing loans, the figures from May showed some let-up from some recent sharp rises.
The total of non-performing housing loans rose to $1.911 billion from $1.901 billion in April.
According to the RBNZ's summary of the non-performing loans, the latest increase for the housing figure meant that the non-performing housing loans rose by $675 million in the past 12 months, with some earlier sharp monthly increases.
Non-performing commercial property loans actually fell by $17 million, while non-performing small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) loans fell $23 million (-2.5%).
In other sector lending details outlined in an RBNZ summary, personal consumer lending stock declined by $112 million (-0.8%) in May 2024, which was the largest monthly decrease reported since March 2022. Personal consumer lending decreased for both banks and non-bank lenders in May 2024, with each reporting declines of $107 million (-1.4%) and $6 million (-0.1%) respectively. The annual growth declined for the sixth consecutive month, down to 2.4%.
Business lending stock increased by $1.2 billion (0.9%), driven by a $1.1 billion (0.9%) increase in banks' business lending. The annual growth rate rose from 1.6% to 3.0% in May 2024.
Agriculture lending stock increased by $507 million (0.8%), which was the largest monthly increase since June 2023. The annual growth rate rose from 0.6% to 0.8%.
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