Remove the lending limits to aid economic recovery? They’re considering it in New Zealand.

The Royal Bank of New Zealand (their central bank) is considering the removal of the lending limits – similar to our own – because it’s a countercyclical tool that is no longer needed.

“More recently we have proposed removing mortgage loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions, as this is a countercyclical tool and we have been able to consider lowering this now that the risks of excessive lending have subsided and banks can now lean into a recovery. This should also enable banks to support customer needs”

That spells it out fairly loud and clear, if the tool isn’t needed then why deploy it? At the moment we are seeing massive issues with sales due to banks restricting in order to comply with the lending rules, this is an unforeseen consequence that will damage certain borrowers who have entered into contracts in good faith.

It’s worth noting that we took our lead in part from New Zealand on the lending rules, our new Governor is from there and house prices in New Zealand are also high – …

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Bigger deposits equal less savings.

An often overlooked aspect of finance is that mortgages are actually a brand of savings, as perverse as that may sound, you have to consider what happens when you pay off a loan over time. The ‘interest’ is the part that pays for the right to use money from the future (which is what credit is, it’s moving money through time) in the here and now, the other part is a ‘capital’ repayment.

When you repay capital you are making a balance sheet gain (or for those into more up to date accounting speak, you make an improvement on your ‘statement of financial position’), even if prices stay static, over time you will eventually owe zero and that means you have a large asset which is the end result of this ‘savings’, albeit not in actual cash.

When you have a housing scarcity and rents are rising, this acts like a ‘tax’ on income, rent and mortgages are paid in after tax income, so the urge to buy when buying is cheaper and obtain a fixed outgoing (as you can …

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