Data from the NZ Banking Association shows that total home lending rose 17.5% in the six months to December, and almost a quarter of new home loans went to first-home buyers.<\/p>\n
There were 70,811 new home loans in the period, up from 60,249 in the first half of 2025. The average value of all new home loans was $392,519, down 3% from the previous period.<\/p>\n
In total, 42.9% of home loan customers were paying more than the minimum repayment, up from 40.3%. Only 1.4% were behind on their payments, the same levels as previously.<\/p>\n
“The fact that over 40% of people with a home loan are ahead on their repayments shows a high level of financial capability among New Zealand homeowners. Managing your money well, especially during a time of economic challenges, is a great skill to have,” said NZ Banking Association chief executive Roger Beaumont.<\/p>\n
Mortgage adviser Jeremy Andrews, of Key Mortgages, said most people who were rolling over on to lower interest rates kept their repayments the same.<\/p>\n
“In some cases clients are increasing a little higher again… The impact of choosing this are huge. For example when comparing how much additional repayments are required to change for example a 30-year loan term to a 27-year loan term to a 25-year alone term is less than a 5% in repayments in each case.”<\/p>\n
How you can save<\/p>\n
![\"Person](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/person-with-payout-of-new-zealand-dollars-stock-photo-FNEFNIJP2ZA6PLYFJM2WWNAFBI.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Person with Payout of New Zealand Dollars stock photo. (Source: istock.com)<\/p>\n
With a $500,000 mortgage and a 30-year loan term it could look like this.<\/p>\n
At the average variable rate of 5.59%, fortnightly payments are $1323 and the mortgage will cost roughly $1.03 million to repay, including $531,709 of interest.<\/p>\n
Fixing it for two years at 5.09% would lower the fortnightly payment to $1251. The overall bill would be $975,732, including $475,732 of interest.<\/p>\n
At the peak of the most recent interest rate cycle, two-year rates were about 7%, making a $500,000 mortgage about $1535 a fortnight and costing a total of $1.196 million to repay.<\/p>\n
If you kept your repayments at that level, though, when rates dropped to 5.09%, you’d only pay $796,815 in total, and $296,816 of interest.<\/p>\n
An extra hundred dollars of fortnight would cut the amount of interest to $263,256.<\/p>\n
An extra $200 a fortnight would reduce it to $236,765. It would also be clear 13 years earlier.<\/p>\n
This isn’t a perfect comparison because rates will move over the course of your home loan.<\/p>\n
The data also showed 68% of credit cards were paid in full without incurring any interest.<\/p>\n
Just over 60% of loans were on fixed interest rates, 17.7% to variable and the remainder a mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 40% of people with home loans are paying more than the minimum required, which can save…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,244,814,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-401529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-property","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401529","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=401529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}