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Interest rates offered by banks are low as a result of the pandemic. The Government has helped out lots of parts of society, and we’re all grateful for this. Have they helped those reliant on interest income?

This post will start with a little rant and then progress into trying to understand the downstream impacts of a big week for the housing market. Just in case you were under a rock this week, the government announced a major change in housing tax policy.

In this article I’m focusing on the idea of debt-to-income ratios. It is likely that they will be a key tool used by the Reserve Bank to meet its new house price stability objective.

The last time 40% deposits for investors were introduced, Auckland house prices had been soaring for four years. This time, we're only a year into the current frenzied house price cycle, and interest rates are much lower than they were. So how much impact will reintroducing the rule have?

It’s just a little bit odd at the moment trying to make sense of mortgage rates. The mortgage rate signals that borrowers are receiving are somewhat confusing.

It’s around this time of the year that I take an educated guess at what will happen with house prices and mortgage rates. As I’ve said time and time again, the strongest correlation that exists is between house prices and interest rates.

If you’re familiar with us, you’ll know that at Squirrel we don’t like to pull punches so here goes. Heartland Bank came out with a staggering mortgage rate of 1.99% fixed for 1-year. Naturally everyone got excited, but what is it actually? Since then, no other banks have followed.

I started writing this property-focussed column for Squirrel Mortgages back in June this year. If you’ve been reading it from then you'll still be surprised like I am that housing markets around the country are so strong, but not as surprised as those who haven't had the chance to read it.

This Wednesday, Treasury released their latest set of economic and fiscal forecasts, as legislation requires they do just ahead of a general election.

Back in March, as we headed into lockdown, most forecasts for our economy and housing market were decidedly on the pessimistic side. Things certainly have weakened off, but not by as badly as feared, and in some cases the post-lockdown spending surge has produced sales well above levels of a year earlier.

After a short hiatus and a 5%-10% fall in house prices, I’m going out on a limb given the current market pessimism and predicting we will stretch into what might be the last great housing boom. Here's why.

There is a certain moralistic view which many analysts have of the housing market. It goes along the lines that people who make money from rising house prices are not as worthy as those who make money from working 40 hours a week, and one day they will get their comeuppance through house prices going back to where they were in some imagined glory days.