Housing, an avalanche of money and RBNZ policy

The weight of money helped create the housing bubble. (Image: DepositPhotos)

Mon, 06 Jun 2022

If you want to understand why our housing market went so crazy, look no further than the fact that New Zealand’s banks collectively lent $25.27 billion of new money on housing in the year ended March.That was more than 83% of their total new lending in the year of $30.33b, according to the data published last week on the Reserve Bank’s bank financial strength dashboard.So, less than 17% of bank lending went to businesses, farmers and for other purposes.*That doesn’t look like a sustainable or desirable state of affairs to me.T...

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