But how much more is to come?
New Zealand’s second-largest bank is lifting a range of its home loan interest rates, following last week’s OCR increase by 50 basis points to 3.5%.
Read more: Reserve Bank makes its next rate call
Westpac has passed on the latest hike in full to floating interest rates, taking them to 7.35% for floating and offset rates, and 7.45% for its everyday rates.
Westpac’s fixed-rate specials have all been lifted by 10 basis points, to between 5.45% for six months and one year to 5.85% for five years, while standard rates over the same terms increased by the same margin and range from 6.05% to 6.45%, Stuff reported.
Read next: ANZ announces lending rate changes
Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, predicted further rises to come.
“At this stage, we’re not expecting mortgage rates to start slowly coming back down until mid-2023,” Kiernan told Stuff. “Before then, floating rates will obviously rise in tandem with the official cash rate, but there is still more pressure on fixed rates to come over the next six to nine months as well as the OCR gets ratcheted higher.
“At the moment, I’m probably the most surprised about where three- to five-year rates are sitting given 10-year government bond rates yesterday reached their highest level since 2014,” he said. “Although increases in one- and two-year rates are likely to be more closely linked to future OCR increases, if these higher long-term wholesale rates are maintained, they could see some faster increases in the longer-term fixed mortgage rates sooner rather than later.”
