Is property investment still the thing for retirement. With interest rates up, not to mention rates and insurance is it worth the weekly cashflow hit? A fairly typical home owner of the day in Auckland, may approach us with a common idea of investing to give some financial freedom in retirement. Looking at the past few decades, the long term gain on property would be around 6%. By using equity in the main home, there might be no need for a cash deposit. The debt repayments are going to be the major expense with this approach. Using this example you could say for a typical home of $700k with ..read more

Redundancy cover is a great way to get peace of mind that there will be some cashflow when you have been made redundant. It can cover you for six months worth of mortgage repayments. However the actual trick is to have this in place before job losses are known about. Whats the catch? If job losses are known about in the industry or company, cover might will likely not be possible. There is also a stand down period of six months when you first take the cover. The post Redundancy cover not likely when job certainty dented in a company appeared first on Mortgages Online | Home and Investment Loa ..read more

The OCR has remained the same since June 2023 and it is very likely to remain at the same level till the second part of this year. Could fixed interest rates drop before then? Well there are two factors which may bring relief to home owners sooner. The speed at which inflation(4.7%) is likely to cool down, currently running at way above the target range(1-2%) Competition for market share, banks do actually compete with each other. As the government changes lending rules(CCCFA) and lending growth is viable, the banks would likely eye getting the most of that growth. The outlook of the central ..read more

Some of the things to consider when trading up. Timing – what will be the best approach and what are the pros and cons of each one. Best of course is to sell first and then buy. But do you sell with a late settlement date? Perhaps however it can limit the number of buyers. Buying first can be risky in certain markets, as you don’t have the exact numbers of what you will get out of the old place. Costs – other costs at times overlooked can be, storage or temporary accommodation. Also the new home loan approval, does it have conditions for reducing short term debt? Car loans and credit cards m ..read more

Miriam Bell(senior journalist Stuff Masthead) was kind enough to share her thoughts around what’s happening with house prices across the main cities in NZ. This February compared to the previous year. Auckland had the highest increase in the numbers of houses sold(52.9%)in February. Although right across the country, the volume of houses sold is up(37.9%). Prices are in positive territory but ever so slightly. In Auckland and Wellington there are is still a big gap in terms of prices from the peak. Interestingly Christchurch seems to look a lot more stable when considering the past ten years ..read more

Your baby will get up to all sorts of dangerous things, from putting all sorts of things in their mouth to climbing obstacles . You will want to wrap them up in cotton wool and insurance is kinda like that. Medical insurance will mean later on in life if conditions do develop, you have robust protection. Especially when considering how the industry treats pre existing conditions. Generally medical cover is not available on conditions that you had developed before taking the cover. Critical illness or trauma cover which provides a lump sum under certain medical conditions, is also available fo ..read more

Does the OCR have an impact on the fixed rates? Yes and no, the clip above captures some trends we have seen over the past two years. Often we will see the short term rates move and be heavily influenced by the OCR. Expectations of future OCR movements also have an impact. As well as the wholesale rates which gets influenced by funds from here and abroad navigating global economic expectations. Could the fixed rates make an opposing move to the OCR We can see the long term rate shift down while the OCR moves up at times during the past few years. Also at times we have seen the banks compete o ..read more

The family is getting bigger and you need a bigger home, a better school zone. Or perhaps you just need to be loved more. Either way we can make things really simple, there are a few ways to go about this. Open ended bridging Imagine if you could settle on a new place and have around six months to sell the old home. This can be a great option and could be available at times. The advantage to this is that you move is smoother. Plus you have secured something you know you can enjoy living in before letting go of the last place. The downside is that the temporary large amount of loan is not gonn ..read more

Not always are you fully covered my friend even with medical insurance. What is Pharmac? There is some sore sentiment towards the public healthcare system at times but we must remember its better than a lot of places in the world. Our government has an awesome instrument for procuring medication, pharmac is the umbrella we do our bulk buying through. However there is never an endless supply of money and so only some medication is covered by the government. So medical insurance has my back right? Depends on the type of medical insurance you have, surprisingly some only cover you for pharmac me ..read more

Should you be worried? Well generally, no. By design the DTI(Debt to Income Ratio) at 6-7 times income is more than what you could borrow. At the time of writing this article at least. Also the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is also proposing to ease deposit requirements at the same time. So why do it? Yeah good point, well as interest rates drop, the loan amount you can afford increases. The DTI is designed to try and get rid of big peaks in house prices during times when such behavior feels justified. Like a low interest rate environment. In some sense you could have more room during tough eco ..read more