Nick Goodall

Kia ora, and welcome to the New Zealand Property Market Podcast, brought to you by Cotality for the 2nd of March, 2026.

I'm Head of Research, Nick Goodall, and today I'm joined, as per usual, by our Chief Economist, Kelvin Davidson.

Kelvin, let's get straight into it this morning.

The lending data for January from the Reserve Bank returned some level of normality, I guess you'd say, after a pretty crazy December data.

Do you want to take us through all those datas, please, mate?

Yeah, I think that's the thing for me, right?

That was the big question we had when these limits were announced to be extended, to be increased.

We were like, yeah, it's all well and good to increase their potential lending, but will people be actually willing to take that on?

We knew the banks would probably be willing to let it out, like they're going to try and continue to increase their book at almost, you know, any way possible.

But just weren't sure how much...

maybe not nervousness, but consciousness that those borrowers might have and go, well, there's plenty of stories out there about people who bought at peak and values have fallen and so they're sitting in negative equity or they're certainly sitting at a property with less than it was paid for.

And so that's reduced their equity as opposed to holding flat or increasing is obviously the dream for those people.

Just how much that consciousness would play on people going, do I really want to extend as far as I can go?

Do you really push beyond your means?

Do you

I'm not beyond your means, but as far as you can go in terms of how much the bank will lend you.

And I think, you know, while this still might not be going to quite that extreme, it does show that there's the willingness and the ability there for people to just grow a little bit further.

To say, yes, I know I can get a property without that big deposit or biggish deposit for a first home buyer.

And I'm willing to do that because, you know, I've got that long term view there.

There is no expectation of values to fall away.