[Suffia]

Hiya
Not sure if I'm posting this in the right place so mods please move it if it doesn't belong here :nice1

We are planning on moving over to NZ with or without PR sometime in the 1st 6months of 2006 (OH is a fab/welder so should have no probs finding work & is coming out for interviews in Jan/Feb 06.)

So to my question, what is an average sized mortgage in NZ ??
Is a $200,000 mortgage big/average/small ??

We'll have at least NZ$110,000 to put towards a house & are thinking of the North island to settle.

Thanks
Suf'n'Kev

[ShakerMike]

Not sure I can specifically answer your questions, but someone told me that a mortgage payment of up to 30% of net take home pay will allow you a reasonable lifestyle around Auckland (we're looking North Shore).

From the research I've done I think house prices vary quite a bit around North Island, and also vary around Auckland, where property prices seem expensive (compared to salary but probably aren't too bad when you compare them to similar properties in the UK)

[foolsgold99]

During the election, helen clark spoke about interests rates, she always spoke about someone with $150k mortgage, so I guess that must be pretty average. Ours is $210k.

$310k, will buy you a pretty nice house in most parts on the north island. Auckland is different though, I wouldn't want to shop for an average family house there with much less than $400K

If you don't have to live in the city for work, then head out to east coast, to either bay of plenty or hawkes bay, a bit nicer weather too from what I understand

[Soon2baKiwi]

Hi - we were told the average mortgage is $250k and ours is a bit more than that. $400k will get you a nice house around West North Shore (Glenfield, Birkenhead etc). My brother in law is an accountant and when we were freaking out about taking out that size mortgage his take on it was that in 10 years time that won't be a big mortgage at all, taking pay increases and cost of living into account. As I say, HIS take on it.

[Singel]

The rule of thumb, it is advisable to take up mortgage in proportion to the net income, generally 30% to max of 40% of your take home pay, for lifestyle sake and not trap with financial woes (not forgetting, there are a lot of household expenses after the monthly mortgage payment).

[Moorf]

This might make you think.... a mortgage of $200k is approx $1400 a month. A salary of $55k is approx $3k take home a month. So about half your salary will go on the mortgage. What you can afford will be dictated by your salary. So $200k could be high or it might be manageable, depending on your income.

[Avalon]

I always think its fun to play with Mortage Calculators (but then im a bit wierd in the head like that).

If you have some idea of what your take home pay will be, go have a look at Westpac's calculators - especially the "fine tune your loan" one which tells you the toatal interest cost of your mortgage over the life of it, and also you can play about with the numbers to see the effect extra payments have on your costs.

http://www.westpac.co.nz/olcontent/olcontent.nsf/Content/Home+loan+calculators

Our mortage is 265K.

[jan]

I went to see the home loan guy last week.

Houses in Orewa (north shore) average between $400 - $500. Four bedroom on the flat and about 10 - 15 yrs old.

We wanted a mortgage of $200,000. Clubbed together with our $200, ( if we sell our Uk property) gave us $400,000. Our monthly payments with a floating interest mortgage was $1700. a month!!! For 30 more years!!!

[Avalon]

Copied from another thread i posted on:

As an example:

We sold a UK house for 215K which had a 145K mortgage on it. My parents sold a 200K house with no mortgage on it.

Together we bought a $600k house here (only £240K!!!!) My parents put in about £80k ($200k), we put in about £55k ($130K) and we have a mortgage of $265K (£106K).

The interest on our UK Mortgage (145K) was costing about £630 a month ($1575).

The interest on out NZ mortgage (106K) is costing: £760 a month ($1900)

[Avalon]

Jan - reminds me - My figures are based on a 20year mortgage (both in the UK and NZ - so the comparison is still applicable)

[Moorf]

Our monthly payments with a floating interest mortgage was $1700. a month!!! For 30 more years!!!

Who are you with Jan - our mortgage of $220k is $757 a fortnight over 30 yrs (so about $1514/mth). Our rate is 7.55% with National.

[tigerlily]

Where are these 30 year loans? I only can find 25 year max on any of the websites I look at.

[Moorf]

I just quickly checked both Westpac and National websites, and both allow you to enter a max of 30 yrs in their mortgage calcs.

[Avalon]

tigerlilly -

We were contantly being qouted for 30 years, and it took quite a bit of shall we say "Firm Talking" to get the mortgage mangers to back off and accept that I did not want a mortage round my neck that long.

Westapacs calculator allows you to change the lenth of mortgage - it also shows you how much od a difference it makes in the long term.

[Avalon]

For those of you (like me) who want to pay off a mortage fast (as in super fast), I would recommend a really good called "Your Mortage and how to pay it off in 5 yeas , by somebody who did it in 3" By Anita Bell.

Shes one of the funniest finance writers Ive come across (not that ive read that many), and is also really good at explaining how to get yourself out of sticky finance messes.

She also explains the "magic" of morgtages (Ie, compound interest) and how to make it work in your interest and not the Bank's.

This book alone has done more to get us out of the financial mess we were in and into a rather positive balance. I cant recommend it highly enough. Some of the information is Aussie based - but the priciples work here or in the UK.

[Moorf]

Yeah, should clarify, that if we were intending to stay put in this property then we'd have chosen a shorter term mortgage. As it is, we have a taken a 1 yr fixed rate (no floating split) 30 yr product.

[Diny]

This is strange - just posted a reply and it disappeared - try again.

Our house cost $270k, we have taken a mortgage for $255k. Didn't want to bring any money over from the UK while the exchange rate is so poor. We have a variable mortgage over 20 years. When the exchange rate gets better we'll transfer funds and pay a chunk off, until then we'll weather the rather hefty monthy payments (it works out better for us that way).

I must admit, the bank were hell bent on us borrowing our limit of 3/4 million over 30 years ...... a very scary thought !!!!!!

We're with ANZ.

Diny

[Carol]

When we applied for our first mortgage - nine years ago (around $150k) we were turned down by the bank Kenny was actually working for!!!!!

We ended up having to go through a broker who still had problems - we were turned down twice.

They reckoned he wasn't making enough money (he was on around about $55k at the time) - they told us to come back when I was working.


We just sat in the bank open mouthed.
Not 3 months before we had been offerred 700 pounds to stay with the building society we were with in the UK (just before we sold).

I've never really had a liking for NZ banks since then!