Cairns Lockie Mortgage Commentary

Cairns Lockie Mortgage Commentary

Issue 2004/2 20 February 2004

Welcome to the second Cairns Lockie Mortgage Commentary for 2004. This is a fortnightly electronic newsletter, which aims to keep you informed on developments at Cairns Lockie, Mortgage Bankers and the mortgage market in general. Previous issues of this commentary can be found on our website http://www.emortgage.co.nz/newsletters.htm

The Money Market

This morning (9am on 20 February 2004) the money markets were at the following levels:

Official cash rate 5.25% (unchanged) 90 day bill rate 5.60 (unchanged) 1 year swap rate 5.76 (down from 5.87) 3 year swap rate 6.04 (down from 6.19) 10 year bond rate 5.88 (down from 5.98) Kiwi dollar 0.7010 (up from 0.6830)

Unsure of What Your House is Worth

In the current strong market, some people have asked us how do they find out exactly what their house is worth. They maybe thinking of selling their property or transferring it to a trust. The most obvious answer is to talk with a couple of local real estate agents who know your area well. As a further check, you can use a registered valuer. Most people's experience with valuers is when a lender asks for a valuation to support a mortgage finance application. But you can also use a valuer, pre sale, to check the current value of your property. This will assist you determine a listing price. Valuers also provide a useful check as to what your real estate agent has been discussing with you. A typical valuation costs less than $400 and if you are selling a property in excess of $500,000, then it may be a good decision to obtain one. To list your property for less than its true value w

Too Many Small Loans?

Many households have their mortgage, but in addition have accumulated over time other smaller loans, such as car hire purchase, chattel loans, credit card debts and maybe a bank overdraft. As most people are aware these types of loans have high interest rates and must be repaid in a short time frame. As a result they can put pressure on a family's cash flow. One solution is to consolidate all outstanding small loans into your mortgage. In this way your interest rate is halved and you have a longer repayment time. If you are in this situation we can look at consolidating your various loans into one. This may be easier than you think, considering house prices have risen over the past two years.

Auckland and Wellington In the Top Twenty

Each year the UK based Economist magazine ranks the best and the worst cities in which to live. This year both Auckland and Wellington were ranked nineteenth equal along with Hoholulu. Last year both our cities were ranked twenty-fourth equal. Factors considered include both economic factors eg how easy is to do business, taxes, quality of the infrastructure, level of corruption and non-economic factors such as pollution, climate and the level of crime. Predictably the Australian cities did well, with Melbourne ranking fist equal with Vancouver and Vienna whereas Sydney ranked sixth. Several African cities and Port Morsby were amongst the worst in which to live.

Spam Filters May Assist You

Like many businesses both large and small we have been receiving enormous quantities of spam emails. There are a number of software packages which are worth investigating to assist you with this problem. We operate one of these packages. We have recently turned up our spam filter in order to decrease some of this unwanted email traffic. If you are sending us some information particularly in the form of attachments and we reject your email, please let us know as we can easily add you to our exception list.

Our current mortgage interest rates are as follows

Variable rate 7.15%

No Financials Home Loan 8.15

Jumbo Loan 7.15

Quick Start Home Loan 6.65

One-year fixed rate 6.96 Two-year fixed rate 7.22 Three-year fixed rate 7.39 Five-year fixed rate 7.46

Line of credit facility 7.25

Regards William Cairns James Lockie

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