[Tia Maria]

Anyone come across any good rates/mortgages?

We'd fixed ours at 7.8% and its up for renewal, back in the UK I would have dug out a Which? report and gone from there.

Anyone else renewing/getting a new mortgage in the next couple of months found a product worth looking at?

Obviously everyone's financial situation is different but it would give me a starting point.

Cheers

Tia

[incredible hulse]

Tia - Have you seen this one ?

http://interest.co.nz/mortgages.asp

We've coming off a 2 year 7.5% in May and dreading it. With the exchange rate plummet also we'll have to keep the mortgage higher as well

[Tia Maria]

Tia - Have you seen this one ?

http://interest.co.nz/mortgages.asp

We've coming off a 2 year 7.5% in May and dreading it. With the exchange rate plummet also we'll have to keep the mortgage higher as well

This is our position exactly, we had hoped to bring some money over to pay a bit off but the rate is so bad, we'll have to hang in there. I wish we'd fixed it for longer but at the time 2 years seemed a sensible time frame as we didn't know how long we'd be in NZ.

I'd forgotten about interest.co.nz - thanks for the link!

Cheers

Tia

[Georgebulldog]

Something I was impressed with was we were able to split our mortage between a 2 year fixed & 5 year fixed so if it goes up only a bit goes up & if it goes down only a bit does, not something I had been offered in the UK, then again never had a mortagge that didn't cost us to take out & have solicitor bills paid for us either how great is that?!

[Tia Maria]

Something I was impressed with was we were able to split our mortage between a 2 year fixed & 5 year fixed so if it goes up only a bit goes up & if it goes down only a bit does, not something I had been offered in the UK, then again never had a mortagge that didn't cost us to take out & have solicitor bills paid for us either how great is that?!

Did you go through a broker to do this?

The OH has been tempted to take advantage of the exchange rate, sell the house and send the money back till the exchange rate improves again! (we've bought it over in bits, probably averaging out at about 2.8). We'd then rent and get interest.

There's probably some reason this isn't wise or tax efficient or something and it is an interesting idea from a financial point of view. Just not sure how much I'd like to go into the rental market round here as I know of so many people who have had to move out of their rental when the landlord decided to sell.

Cheers

Tia

[Georgebulldog]

No this was done through our bank. I think in hindsight we could have shopped & got better deals but we needed everything quickly as we found a house & just wanted it sorted. By the time the mortgage is due for renewal I'll be doing the searching so will look around a lot more

[incredible hulse]

The OH has been tempted to take advantage of the exchange rate, sell the house and send the money back till the exchange rate improves again! (we've bought it over in bits, probably averaging out at about 2.8). We'd then rent and get interest.

There's probably some reason this isn't wise or tax efficient or something and it is an interesting idea from a financial point of view. Just not sure how much I'd like to go into the rental market round here as I know of so many people who have had to move out of their rental when the landlord decided to sell.

Cheers

Tia We're thinking of doing a similar thing. I already currently trade between the 2 and although the interest rates in the uk are lower than here, without the tax on interest (cough) it pays. Our average is at 2.78 so very tempting at the moment to sell up and tax 2.44; not sure if we would go back for good though as opposed to renting

[Nick88]

I was about to suggest interest.co.nz, too, a very good site.

If you want to keep it in GBP you can set up a foreign currency account here, but I think you would only get UK interest rates not the lovely NZ savings rate. That would be an easier way to keep it close but allow you to change quickly when the rate improves. Personally I would not be sure the dollar will drop much in the next couple of years, Alan Bollard is not keen to drop interest rates.

[talisker]

The OH has been tempted to take advantage of the exchange rate, sell the house and send the money back till the exchange rate improves again! (we've bought it over in bits, probably averaging out at about 2.8). We'd then rent and get interest.

There's probably some reason this isn't wise or tax efficient or something and it is an interesting idea from a financial point of view. Just not sure how much I'd like to go into the rental market round here as I know of so many people who have had to move out of their rental when the landlord decided to sell.


The main problem with this is that, theoretically, the exchange rate reflects the difference in interest rates between the two countries. So you could convert your NZD to GBP, but in the time it's sitting in the UK (or in a GBP account in NZ) it'll be earning far less interest than in NZ. This could wipe out any savings due to exchange rate changes.

The other difficulty is there's a huge risk in trying to work out what the currency market's going to do. You'd be basically gambling with your hard earned cash. Yes, the dollar seems high against the pound right now, but I have absolutely no idea if it will get better, or worse, or when it will. You could move your money to the UK, earn less interest, and the dollar gets even higher.

People do make money through currency speculation, and if thats what you fancy doing then go for it. But I suspect for most people it's too high risk. Selling up, earning ludicrously high NZ interest rates, and renting as the property market cools might be a better move.

[Tia Maria]

Ok when we were sorting out refinancing our mortgage, rates were roughly:

Floating 10.7% :(

6 month 9.95%
1 year 9.95%
2 years 9.70%

We were offered by Bank 1:

0.5% discount on floating (10.2%)

6 month 9.85%
1 year 9.85%
2 years 9.55%

By Bank 2:

0.5% discount on floating (10.25%)

6 months 9.79%
1 year 9.75%
2 years 9.60%

We eventually managed to get: 1 year 9.7% and 0.55% off floating rate by going back and forth between the two banks. We also got $600 towards transfer fees & solicitor fees.

Having a quick check rates now (April 2008) seem to be (roughly):

Variable Rate 10.75% p.a

1 Year Fixed 9.75% p.a
2 Year Fixed 9.70% p.a

I'm sure it would have been possible to get a better deal than we did, but we were slightly restricted by time constraints.

However, I thought people might find it useful to know what is actually offered by banks compared to the published mortgage rates.

Cheers

Tia

[incredible hulse]

Cheers Tia. I had a meeting with the bank manager today as our 2 year 7.5% fixed is up next month .... argh. Initial indications were 0.05% discount off their advertised fixed rates and they wouldn't charge the 250 dollar renewal fee (nice of them !). So 6 month fixed was 9.8 and 12 month fixed 9.7%
Just about to ring a mortgage broker to see if I can start playing them off against each other.

Also noticed Kiwibank coming in with this one today:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4495445a13.html

I'm hoping the others will follow suit now but don't really want to fix more than 6/12 months personally as I'm thinking the ocr will drop late this year and early next year which will have the double bonus of making the dollar weaker

[Wonderbob]

I'm hoping the others will follow suit now but don't really want to fix more than 6/12 months personally as I'm thinking the ocr will drop late this year and early next year which will have the double bonus of making the dollar weaker

Think the OCR will have to fall within 6 months, the Kiwi economy is contracting at a rapid rate right now and shows no signs of improving in the short term - the US credit crunch is far from over, and the Kiwi housing market has more downside to come I think.......

[Tia Maria]

Cheers Tia. I had a meeting with the bank manager today as our 2 year 7.5% fixed is up next month .... argh. Initial indications were 0.05% discount off their advertised fixed rates and they wouldn't charge the 250 dollar renewal fee (nice of them !). So 6 month fixed was 9.8 and 12 month fixed 9.7%
Just about to ring a mortgage broker to see if I can start playing them off against each other.

Also noticed Kiwibank coming in with this one today:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4495445a13.html

I'm hoping the others will follow suit now but don't really want to fix more than 6/12 months personally as I'm thinking the ocr will drop late this year and early next year which will have the double bonus of making the dollar weaker

Let us know how you get on, it will be interesting to see how much better mortgage brokers can do.

Also, we needed all our '$600 towards fees', (bank & solicitors fees were actually a bit more than that), so its well worth getting as much as you can from them. At the time $600 sounded like more than enough just to change our mortgage to a different bank, but its amazing what they can find to charge you for!

Cheers

Tia

[incredible hulse]

Let us know how you get on, it will be interesting to see how much better mortgage brokers can do.

Also, we needed all our '$600 towards fees', (bank & solicitors fees were actually a bit more than that), so its well worth getting as much as you can from them. At the time $600 sounded like more than enough just to change our mortgage to a different bank, but its amazing what they can find to charge you for!

Cheers

Tia
Had to take the plunge today - still only got 0.05% off the advertised rate; took a 6 month fixed at 9.7% :( About 300 dollars a month more than we currently pay I think. Probably the best rates at the moment are 2 year fixed from TSB and Kiwibank (8.98/.99) but I'm still banking on the OCR dropping by year end so when I come to renew again in November I'm hoping the forward rates for these are close to 8.5%