Interest that this is after the news headlines that we were the first country to reduce the OCR.
Was this expected? I feel like the RBNZ may have already indicated this rise would happen.
RBNZ last time (when going from 5.25% - 5.5%) they said they “had done enough”; there are no rate reductions predicted (take predictions how you will) until 2024.
I’m not sure why there has been a rate rise; when there has been no indication that there will be another rate rise. But in saying that, the economy has not cooled as much as expected.
Did they? I thought I remembered there was going to be another before the end of the year. I have had trouble finding an article though.
Normally mortgage rates are set not based on the OCR but based on the swap rate (the cost of banks lending to each other). The OCR does heavily influence the swap rate, but there can be other reasons too. I wonder if something else has happened to cause this?
It would be interesting to know; I know that the swap rates are what set the mortgage rates, but my understanding is limited. I also know the OCR is highly correlated with the swap rates, but I don’t know what else causes changes in the swap rates.
When a bank has too much money (say, from people putting money in a savings account without an equivalent mortgagee to lend the money to), the bank is paying interest to the person with the money in the savings account but isn’t recouping this cost from someone paying a mortgage. Or if a bank has signed too many mortgages, they may not have enough money to fulfil them.
To help offset this, banks can lend money from the Reserve Bank (RBNZ) to cover any shortfall that day, or deposit money with them (rates are OCR +/- and amount depending on if it’s depositing or lending).
Swap rates are banks lending money to each other to cover differences. But in general, these contracts are longer term (think of the OCR as being like a floating rate, and swap rates being like fixed term rates).
Rising swap rates could mean that the overseas banks that banks here are borrowing from are facing increased costs. Banks here are probably weighing up the risk of using OCR floating rate vs a higher swap rate from borrowing overseas cash.
I guess an explanation here is that globally there may be more demand for these swap contracts as more people are getting new mortgages again, so maybe this pushes up the cost of signing these new swap contracts and therefore pushes up the lending cost?
Longer term rates are still lower than short term which is quite unusual. So I guess they expect rates to come down.
Yes I’m not running from memory but I believe the RBNZ said one more rise then they will hold it for a while. So banks are anticipating that they will fall over the longer term (funny how we consider 5 years long term).
