Home lending increase at four-year high

Nearly NZ$1 bln more loaned on houses in past month, most for nearly five years; amount loaned up 4% in the past year, the biggest rise for four years

Property

Nearly NZ$1 bln more loaned on houses in past month, most for nearly five years; amount loaned up 4% in the past year, the biggest rise for four years

28th Feb 13, 3:33pm by David Hargreaves

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Image sourced from Shutterstock.com</a>

The increasing heat in the housing market is being demonstrated in the latest home lending figures.

According to Reserve Bank sector credit figures for January, released today, the amount loaned on residential property climbed by some NZ$952 million in the month, to a new total of NZ$178.66 billion.

The monthly rise was in dollar terms the most for nearly five years, dating back to the last housing boom. While the year-on-year increase of 4% was the highest in exactly four years.

During the month agricultural lending rose slightly to NZ$49.81 billion, but showed a strong 4.8% rise for the year.

Business lending also increased slightly, to NZ$79.05 billion, but the annual rate of increase, at 2.2%, was the smallest for 11 months.

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5 Comments

by Boatman | 28th Feb 13, 4:35pm 1362022542

Happy days are here again......... we are all rich , hope its ends well

by bigblue | 28th Feb 13, 7:31pm 1362033119

Probably up $1.5 billion in February.

by Stephen Hulme | 28th Feb 13, 8:22pm 1362036171

Cripes, if nominal GDP growth doesn't follow we could be borrowing to pay ourselves and our debts - a ponzi scheme?

by David George | 1st Mar 13, 8:40am 1362080421

The Credit Ponzi Scheme is alive and kicking, Annual nominal GDP is up no more than 4%, say $8 billion, easily outstripped by credit growth of over $20 billion.

Central Govt. $10billion

Households $7billion

Agriculture $2.3billion

Business $1.6billion

Local Government ?

So debt is growing at almost three times nominal GDP, what happened to the deleveraging that was supposed to be the reason for the soft economy? Another year of this and things will get very ugly; ugly international position = rising interest rates = current account deficit blow out = dollar colapse = higher unemployment and so on. John Key will be saying "well no one could have forseen this", wonder if he's had a read of the S&P report.

by steven | 28th Mar 13, 7:06am 1364407593

While bad tax policy has certianly paid its bad, NZers have acted irresponcibly, and quite a few % will be paying for that over the next decade IMHO.

regards