Mortgage lending dips

By far the biggest slice of lending is on two-year fixed interest rates at $1.8 billion, after the flurry of floating and short-term fixing while rates were dropping last year. The next most popular for borrowers are one-year fixed rates at $1.25 billion.

Data from the central bank’s series on new lending fully secured by residential mortgage shows the total of new residential lending on fixed interest rate terms increased to 82% ($4.91 billion) in April, up 1.2% from March, while the total on floating interest rates was $1.01 billion, down from $1.1 billion in March.

New owner-occupier lending dropped slightly to $5.9 billion from $6.1 billion in March, and lending on all terms apart from 18 months, two years and four years declined. 

The share of owner occupier loans on floating dropped to 17.1% from 18.1% in March. However, short-term fixed rates represented 42.9% of new lending in April.