This barring the April lockdown month of 2020, RBNZ lending figures show
Barring the April lockdown month of 2020, July posted the slowest growth of New Zealand’s mortgage stock in five years.
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This was according to the latest sector lending figures from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
In July, the total mortgage stock for both banks and non-bank lenders increased by only $848 million, to a little over $340 billion worth of outstanding mortgages, interest.co.nz reported.
To find a month with slower growth, one has to go back exactly five years to 2017, barring the lockdown month, after which lending bounced back pretty quickly.
In fact, the peak monthly growth in the mortgage stock of over $3.7 billion was hit by March 2021, though things have been cooling rapidly since then.
Meanwhile, the annual growth rate in the total amount of outstanding mortgages peaked at 12.1% in July last year, but has been falling each and every month since then.
As of July 2022, the annual rate of growth stood at 6.2% – a sharp decline from 6.9% just the previous month.
In a separate breakdown of figures, RBNZ reported a $753 million increase in the total bank housing lending stock in July.
Residential lending to investors was down by $10 million, RBNZ data showed. Total business lending stock was up by $221 million in July 2022, with its annual growth decreasing from 8.6% to 8.5%, interest.co.nz
“Annual growth has been trending down from its peak in May, which was the highest annual growth rate since February 2009,” RBNZ said.
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Total agriculture lending stock increased by $192 million in July 2022 but decreased by 0.7% on an annual basis.
Separate RBNZ figures released for bank deposits showed a continuing resurgence of household term deposits in line with rising interest rates, with the total amount on term deposit lifting by $2.7 billion in July to $93.8 billion and this tally has increased by more than $10.5 billion to date this calendar year.
Transaction and savings balances that thrived during the COVID lockdown period were now out of favour, however, with household transaction balances down by $1.2 billion (to $50.4 billion) in July, while savings balances dropped $676 million (to $79 billion).
RBNZ said there was an overall growth in total household deposits of $815 million, though, interest.co.nz reported.
