Hi [salutation],

All too quickly the new year is here, the holidays have come to a close and the kids are back at school. The mortgage market has been particularly active of late, with consolidation, new product offerings, and renewed competition amongst lenders for your business marking the first few weeks of the working year... 

I would like to welcome a couple of new faces to our lender panel- North South Finance, and GE Money.

North South Finance will allow us to offer a variety of specialist products for those seeking short term funding (under 12 months) for the following:

Bridging Finance, Development Funding, Commercial and Industrial

They will provide a comprehensive range of services for those of you who have specialist projects which largely fall outside of the scope of traditional bank lending. All enquiries are welcome to 0800 800 067.

GE Money is the finance business  of GE, the largest company in the world, which at last estimate turns over something in the vicinity of $US150 Billion, compared with NZ's GDP figure of $US67 Billion, making it almost 3 times larger than our country! Given their size, scale and ability to access capital from the global market place GE is able to provide extremely competitive products in both the self employed, and credit impaired markets.  Again if you are interested in how GE's offerings compare to your present home loan give us a call on 0800 800 067.

This month we are pleased to welcome Kate Mooar and Lisa Daly to the team here in Auckland, and Pam White in Hastings. All 3 come from banking backgrounds, Kate with BNZ (thanks guys), Lisa with Westpac and Pam with National Bank. This takes our number of operating franchisees to 8 and we expect to announce a minimum of 2 new additions next month. To date the feedback we have received from our lenders indicates that our guys are of the highest quality, which means we are well on the way to fulfilliing our goal of being able to brag about having the best service offering in the market. 
Keep an eye out for a few new initiatives along these lines over the next few months. If you have any thoughts on what you believe we should be looking to provide to make our service better then please drop me an email with your suggestion to adam@adamparore.co.nz.

It appears that the news that $40b of mortgages will come off fixed rates this year appears to have sunk in with a resulting flurry of marketing activity the outcome. From a consumer perspective this is good news- there will be plenty of people competing for your business. The RBNZ has indicated that there are unlikely to be further rate rises meaning floating rates will stay at about 9.5% for the rest of the year- they have also said that these won't be coming down again either for quite a while. For this reason, unless you have to, you shouldn't be floating.
With regards to how long you should fix for my view is still that the 2 or 3 year option at between 8.15% and 7.90% is the place to be. Over time history tells us that 7% is about the average cost of a mortgage so we are at a point in the cycle where we are paying slightly more than average- this is fine for a couple of years but you wouldn't want to be paying above the odds for any longer than you have to.
Hence the 5 year rate at 7.65% makes little sense- why lock yourself into paying .65% more than average for 5 years! 5 years is a very long time, and .65% on your average $200,000 loan equates to $6500 by the time you are done. 

As a result of speaking to and meeting a whole pile of new people over Christmas it has become apparent that not many people know that if you are self employed there is now an entire industry dedicated to ensuring that you still have the same ability to borrow money as everyone else! Being self employed myself this is a matter close to my heart! Basically the way it works is this- rather than dredge up a whole pile of information proving your income, including financial statements, we have a number of specialist products that allow you to simply state what your income is.
So, if your bank is giving you a hard time, (as they do), give us a shout and one of our specialists will be able to help you out. No fuss, no drama- and if you're worried about the cost, don't be, the rates are roughly about the same. For a quick chat about how we, can help you, call 0800 800 067 to speak to one of our Advisers.

This Issues Links

How Much Can You Borrow?

Become a Broker

Mortgage Navigator^TM

Property Evaluation

12 Mortgage Busting Strategies

Home Buyers Guide