{"id":258719,"date":"2026-01-30T03:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T03:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/258719\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T03:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T03:58:13","slug":"bank-switching-surges-to-5-8b-in-december-as-total-monthly-mortgage-commitments-tops-14b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/258719\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank switching surges to $5.8b in December, as total monthly mortgage commitments tops $14b"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nLatest Reserve Bank figures show a massive spike in change of loan provider in December, with record amounts being moved and a record share of the total new monthly mortgage market\n<\/p>\n

WOW. Did somebody say shop around?!<\/p>\n

A lot of New Zealanders had mortgages up for refixing in December – and big numbers of them changed banks to get what they perceived as the best deal.<\/p>\n

The Reserve Bank’s new residential mortgage lending by purpose figures<\/a> for the December month show a whopping $5.785 billion worth of mortgages, representing 41.1% of the $14.066 billion of new mortgages in the month, were for a change of loan provider.<\/p>\n

Both the amount and share of the loan provider change figures are easily a record in a data series that dates back to January 2017. And it would be a fair bet that they are all time records dating back to before this series started too.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In addition, such was the flurry of re-financing activity that it drove the total month mortgage figure (of $14.066 billion) to a new all-time high monthly total – outstripping the $10.5 billion in March 2021 at the height of the pandemic frenzy.<\/p>\n

The previous high percentage share for loan provider switching was just 26.2% back in July 2024, while the previous high figure was just $2.6 billion in July 2025. So, the December effort more than doubled that total.<\/p>\n

And in December 2025, it wasn’t just small mortgages that were changing provider. The Reserve Bank figures show the average size of loan was over $718,000 – and that too is a new record high.<\/p>\n

With loans worth $718,000 to refinance, no wonder people were shopping around.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The graphs are sourced from RBNZ’s summary of the monthly figures.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latest Reserve Bank figures show a massive spike in change of loan provider in December, with record amounts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[916,138,45402,45405,45401,25133,45400,45404,11534,45403,35786,111,139,69,45406,45407],"class_list":["post-258719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-banking","tag-business","tag-debt-to-income-ratios","tag-dtis","tag-fhb","tag-financial-stability","tag-first-home-buyers","tag-house-prices","tag-lending","tag-macroprudential-tools","tag-mortgages","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nz-housing-market","tag-nz-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}