{"id":302203,"date":"2026-02-25T23:56:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/302203\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T23:56:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:56:13","slug":"mortgage-rate-u-turn-bnz-cuts-long-term-rates-3yr-loan-dips-back-under-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/302203\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortgage rate U-turn: BNZ cuts long-term rates, 3yr loan dips back under 5%"},"content":{"rendered":"

The largest cut, a 40bps drop, will see the five-year fixed home loan rate fall from 5.69% to 5.29%.<\/p>\n

Less than a month ago, BNZ hiked the same five-year term by 40bps to 5.69%.<\/p>\n

At the same time, it raised its four-year offering by 26bps to 5.55%.<\/p>\n

The Herald has approached BNZ for comment.<\/p>\n

Last week, Westpac also made changes to its long-term fixed home loan rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Its advertised three-year fixed special rate dropped by 16bps to 4.99%, while its four-year and five-year fixed special rates were reduced by 20bps to 5.19% and 5.29% respectively.<\/p>\n

Last week, the Herald reported the drop in wholesale interest rates<\/a> that followed the Reserve Bank\u2019s OCR review meant banks technically had room to cut some of their fixed mortgage rates. <\/p>\n

Reserve Bank Assistant Governor Karen Silk and consultant Jim Reardon broadly affirmed this view.<\/p>\n

Wholesale interest rates dropped back a little, because the Reserve Bank was more dovish than expected. The market foresaw it being a more worried about the risk of rising inflation than it was. The market therefore believed the bank would pencil in an OCR hike for the middle of the year. <\/p>\n

Instead, the Reserve Bank suggested it would lift the OCR at the end of the year, and keep monetary policy \u201caccommodative for some time\u201d.<\/p>\n

The easing back in wholesale interest rates last week, followed a spike late-last year, when the market over-reacted to the Reserve Bank\u2019s commentary following its November OCR review. <\/p>\n

So, the reduction in some mortgage rates being seen now follows a lift in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The largest cut, a 40bps drop, will see the five-year fixed home loan rate fall from 5.69% to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[165765,28848,1863,165766,28500,138,10666,59776,52636,24826,18060,48425,16400,111,139,69,19257,7676,8244,8238,44869],"class_list":["post-302203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-3yr","tag-28848","tag-back","tag-backflipped","tag-bnz","tag-business","tag-cuts","tag-dips","tag-dropping","tag-hike","tag-loan","tag-longterm","tag-mortgage","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rate","tag-rates","tag-recent","tag-under","tag-uturn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302203","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=302203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}