Hot weather but cooling inflation

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More heat across the country and plenty of data to talk about this week too, starting with the latest inflation figures for Q4 2023.

The CPI/inflation trend is definitely in the right direction, but with domestic/non-tradable prices such as rents and council rates still a bit problematic, the OCR isn’t likely to be cut in the near term. But cuts are possibly on the cards for the second half of the year, with some falls in shorter term fixed mortgage rates also likely.

With the dust settling on the RBNZ’s announcement about LVRs and DTIs, Nick and Kelvin also give a quick update this week, which reiterates that there could be a net boost to property activity around the middle of the year, but also that borrowers who are currently above the DTI limits shouldn’t panic – the rules aren’t retrospective.

Plenty of other data to cover too – including last week’s December NZ Activity Index (ok-ish), and then this week’s filled jobs for December (Monday), mortgage lending for December (Monday), foreign buyers for Q4 (Tuesday), ANZ business confidence (Wed.) and consumer confidence (Fri.) for January, and new dwelling consents for December (Friday). All to be covered in detail next week!

Also check out our latest Housing Chart Pack, highlighting the strong market share for first home buyers in 2023.

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