Auckland home-owners are already wanting to renegotiate loans or borrow more following the release of Auckland Council's new property values, a mortgage broker says.
Photo: AFP
Tens of thousands were so keen to see how much their homes were worth they caused the council's website to crash yesterday.
Listen to Bruce Patten
A mortgage broker at Loan Market, Bruce Patten, told Morning Report many homeowners called yesterday, wanting to use their new valuation to raise more capital for renovations, and new cars and boats, and he thinks there will be more inquiries to come.
He said customers coming off fixed rates can now hope to negotiate a better interest rate - if they had more equity in their home.
Mr Patten warned the valuations were generally "sight unseen" and an indiction only of value. "The price is what someone's prepared to pay for it today," he said
Meanwhile, the council website is still not working properly, and staff are working to fix the problems.
On average the site gets around 90,000 daily page views, but yesterday there were nearly 1 million, the council says.
Yesterday was only the second time the council had uploaded around 500,000 valuations of individual properties to its website.