ANZ Economist Latest Mortgage Borrowing Strategy

The only change to ANZ’s carded mortgage rates in February was a lift in the 6-12 month fixed rates by up to 20bps. Financial markets continue to expect the OCR to rise by over 1 percent in 2014 and a further 0.6 percent over 2015, a factor borrowers should take into consideration when making the decision to fix. While further increases in mortgage rates are inevitable, breakeven tables show that stiff rises in rates are needed to fix for longer than 2 years. Pricing remains more attractive for terms of 12-18 months. That said, borrowers may wish to consider fixing a small portion of their mortgage for longer terms for the sake of certainty