Homeowners feeling the pinch amid high mortgage repayments

In the past 15 years, the average Kiwi household mortgage repayment has nearly doubled.

The sharpest rise was in the last couple of years - with the average repayment going from $475 a week in 2022, to $606 a week in 2023.

Jackson Hapeta told First Up he was one of those homeowners who got caught in the rise when he had to re-fix his loan.

The interest rate on his mortgage went from around 2.5 percent to nearly 7 percent.

His repayments went up by about $1000 a fortnight, and he said it has been difficult balancing the books.

"We had to cut back on quite a number of things that we would normally spend money on and change where we spend our money, like changing supermarkets, basically counting every dollar and pulling back on family trips away and and stuff like that, just to make sure that we can pay our mortgage."

Fiony Vuleta owns a home in Tauranga.

She said more than half of her family income went towards mortgage repayments.

"One of our incomes, the whole lot's going on just for now. Yeah, because our mortgage rates [has] just come off fixed."

The latest research revealed she was not alone.

According to the Finance and Mortgage Advisers Association of New Zealand, one in four Kiwis spent more than half their income on mortgage repayments each month.

Country manager Leigh Hodgetts said many New Zealanders feel their financial situation has worsened over the past 12 months, and they are holding out for the next Official Cash Rate announcement.

"We are seeing people just holding off and not refixing their mortgages or doing too much at the moment just to wait and see anticipation that they might be able to lock in for a lower rate."

Hapeta said he will be watching closely for how the banks' home loan rates change after the OCR announcement.

"Hopefully it comes down again because our mortgage will be coming up in the next six months.

"It'll be really helpful for us if we can bring our mortgage repayments down when we refix early next year. That will really help our household. If we could, you know, bring our mortgage repayments down to not being so much of our [income]."

Meanwhile, he told First Up making ends meet had been a real challenge.

"It has been stressful, completely changing lifestyle and there's some good things like learning how to grow vegetables and all that kind of stuff.

"It's not nice having to worry about money and trying to make things work."

Economist and Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said the general forecast was that the OCR will go from 4.75 percent down to 4.25 percent.

"Most expectations from economists are that the Reserve Bank will be cutting the official cash rate by 50-basis points.

"There were thoughts earlier in the cycle that perhaps November's decision could include a 75-basis point cut, but with recent labour market data, perhaps not quite."

But he said it remained to be seen if banks will respond by dropping their home loan rates because they had already been dropping their fixed rates recently.

"We've seen mortgage rates continue to fall over the last couple of months, although there does seem to be a little bit more front loading of those interest rate cuts that have already been priced into people's mortgage rates."

"We've seen up until September only a 25-basis point cut to the Official Cash Rate, but a whole percentage point just about come off the likes of a one-year fixed mortgage rate. So there does seem to be some front loading and so into the future we will be looking quite closely at if an interest rate cut to the Official Cash Rate will come through as directly into mortgage rates.

"Long story short, we still expect interest rates to continue to fall into 2025, but just how big those cuts might be is still yet to be seen."

For those home owners on high rates that are fixed for another year or two, the idea of breaking from that rate might be tempting.

But Hodgetts warned banks' break fees could be costly.

"If you had a $600,000 loan and there was a 1 percent difference. That adds up to quite a lot of money, so it could be looking at several thousands to actually break a loan for a term that it might not be that far off, it might be another a year out or something like that. I'd say at the moment, you know, to think 'I can just go and refinance that'. But you know there's the cost at the back of this that you need to consider."

But for home owners like Vuleta - with the most of their incomes going on repayments - her hopes of further rate cuts were high.

"Hopefully, when the OCR goes down and rates go down again, that will take the load off and and we'll be better off. It's a little bit stressful, but we'll we'll manage until then."

The next OCR decision will be announced on 27 November.

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