Investors show no signs of backing off from the housing market ahead of new restrictive rules, but the proportionate size of loans is shrinking

Investors are still accounting for over a third of house purchases ahead of new restrictive rules aimed at them - but they do appear to be backing off on the proportionate size of loans.

New Reserve Bank figures showing loans by type for August reveal that in the month, out of a total of $5.94 billion advanced on mortgages, investors accounted for $1.989 billion, or 33.48%. This figure has been edging upwards in recent months.

The figure is, of course, national, while the Reserve Bank believes that in Auckland, investors have been accounting for more than 40% of house purchases. RBNZ deputy governor Grant Spencer said last month that based on information from property information, analytics and services provider CoreLogic, investors accounted for 41% of Auckland house sales in June. This continued the trend that can be seen in this article from back in May.

These latest figures, along with very strong mortgage figures in the past week, (highest by number and amount since April) would indicate that there is a real flurry of activity taking place ahead of the introduction of new rules aimed at curbing investors.

Next month new tax rules kick in, including that any profits on house sales by investors within two years may attract tax. The following month there's new RBNZ rules meaning that Auckland housing investors won't be able to borrow more than 70% of the value of the house they are buying.

The latter rule's likely to affect quite a lot of investors. As recently as May, more than $1 billion worth of loans to investors were done so at LVRs above 70%. This compared with a total of $1.98 billion of loans to investors in that month. In other words the above-70% LVR borrowers made up 51.15% of the total.

But ahead of the rule change these figures are already coming down. In the latest month the amount loaned at above 70% LVR was just 43.64% ($868 million) of the $1.989 billion. The percentage dropped sharply from 47.25% in July and 50.8% in June.

Separately, another set of August figures also compiled by the RBNZ, shows that the banks are still well under the existing 10% 'speed limit' on the proportion of loans they can write for LVRs over 80%. After exemptions just 6.3% of mortgage money advanced was on above-80% loans, down from 6.6% a month earlier.

Once the RBNZ's new rules come into place in November it is planned for the 'speed limit' to be relaxed to 15% outside of Auckland.