A mortgage adviser has reimbursed $5,556 in marketing and legal costs to a couple who complained to Financial Services Complaints Ltd (FSCL) that it took three months to find out they couldn’t get finance to buy a motel after they sold their house.

The scrap between mortgage advisers and the Commerce Commission over its insistence borrowers be presented with three actual offers from three different lenders has taken another turn.

For longer-term interest rates to fall the OCR would need to dip below 3%, ANZ says in its latest Property Focus report.

The latest figures from Centrix and the RBNZ show the drop in interest rates is not yet helping the surge in mortgage arrears and non-performing loans.

First home buyers who piled into the housing market at the end of last year and bought so they didn’t have to compete with the coming surge of investors, were on the right track.

There is no great benefit in sticking to floating, six- or 12-month rates for mortgage holders anymore.

ASB says further OCR cuts will have minimal impact on longer-term rates.

More first home buyers are using their mortgage advisers as they race to buy a property expecting lower interest rates will bring more people into the market this year.

The RBNZ’s latest survey of expectations will give it some solace ahead of its OCR decision on Wednesday.

Consensus among the country’s main banks is the OCR will be cut to 3.75% on Wednesday but after that all eyes will be on the RBNZ’s Monetary Policy Statement outlining its forecast.

As potential new homeowners struggle with saving a decent deposit a mortgage adviser can put before a bank in a loan application, Squirrel Mortgages has taken a swipe at how much profit banks are making from savings accounts.

One of the possibilities of open banking includes the ability for borrowers to get pre-approval for a home loan in 10 minutes and to make instant low-cost payments.

A month is a long time in the home loan world.

Between November and December last year new mortgage lending switched swiftly from floating to six-month terms by borrowers taking out new loans.

Some financial advice providers are taking an overly conservative approach to meeting their regulatory obligations, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) says.

The question hovering on mortgage advisers’ lips is when they should start pointing clients to longer fixed interest terms on their mortgages.

Mortgage arrears are increasing – up 7% year on year in December, the latest Centrix data show.