A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Tuesday; Auckland house sales sag, fewer houses built, loan arrears rise, other building consents soft too, swaps down, NZD slips, & more

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
There are no changes to report today. All rates are here.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
Relatively minor changes, all cuts, we announced by Kiwibank, RSB, and Mutual Credit Finance today. All updated term deposit rates less than 1 year are here, for 1-5 years, they are here.

MORE STOCK, LOWER SALES, LOWER PRICES
Barfoot & Thompson's sales numbers and median price both dropped in February as stock for sale hit a 14-year high. The median selling price through this dominant Auckland agency has declined for three consecutive months on the stock level surge.

ARREARS RISE
Mortgage arrears reached an 8-year high in February, Centrix says. According to them, 23,700 home loans are past due, a 6% year-on-year rise.

FEWER HOUSES TO BE BUILT
The annual value of building work consented was down $5.6 bln over two years. A total of 15,668 fewer new homes per year are now being consented compared to two years ago.

COMPARE BANKS
The RBNZ has updated its Dashboard data, and we have update our Key Bank Metrics tool, to December 2024. For example you can compare non-performing housing loans (G3), and many other similar metrics. We have also updated our bank leverage tables.

CLEAR, CONCISE & RELEVANT
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SLUMP DEEPENS
Non-residential building consents were lower too in January, In fact the floor area consented for buildings other than for housing was down -15.4% in the year to January.

NZX UPDATE
The NZX50 is down -0.9% today as at 3pm, up +1.0% in a week, but down -4.9% from the start of 2025. Spark, The Warehouse, Manawa Energy, and Freightways are top today's gainers. Gentrack, NZX, Vista, and Summerset lead the decliners.

MANY STILL WANT TO USE CASH
The Q1 update to the RBNZ survey on the use of cash by households continues to derank its importance. But the shift isn't fast.

THOSE WHO CAN PAY SHOULD. THOSE WHO CAN'T SHOULD STAY AWAY
Auckland's mayor is supporting congestion charges, among a range of other "practical measures" to ease traffic bottlenecks and improve productivity. That was one solution proposed by AT in their recently-released "white paper".

NO END IN SIGHT FOR POWER PRICE PRESSURES
Transpower reported very high electricity prices over the past week. "The average wholesale electricity spot price at Ōtāhuhu last week increased 42% to $343/MWh from $242/MWh the week prior. Wholesale prices at Ōtāhuhu peaked at $2372/MWh on Monday 24 February at 12:30pm after Tauhara geothermal plant was taken offline. There were several periods of inter-island energy and reserve price separation last week during the ongoing HVDC Pole 2 outage." This is the situation right now.

EYES ON THE NEXT GDT DAIRY AUCTION
There is another full dairy auction tomorrow morning (NZT). The derivatives market pricing today suggests the SMP price will change little from last week's Pulse event. But they are expecting more than a -2% fall in the WMP price. And the butter prices might fall -7% from the last full auction.

STORM WATCH
In Northern NSW and Southern Queensland, there are severe storm warnings in place for a major weather event, Cyclone Alfred.

MARGINAL GAIN, JUST BETTER THAN INFLATION
Australian retail trade was up marginally in January from December and the gain was about what was expected. Year on year it was up +4.1% and a similar rise top the past three months.

ONE & DONE ?
The RBA Minutes released today reviewed the case for a rate cut, one they made by reducing their cash rate target by -25 bps to 4.10%. But the tone of the reasoning suggests there won't be any more cuts until they have greater confidence that inflation will actually reduce to the middle of their target range. They seemed sceptical.

SWAP RATES HOLD
Wholesale swap rates are probably little-changed today at the short end, but keep an eye on our chart below which will record the final positions closer to 5pm. The 90 day bank bill rate was down -3 bps at 3.76% on Monday. The Australian 10 year bond yield is down -9 bps at 4.29%. The China 10 year bond rate is down -4 bps at 1.75%. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is down -7 bps at 4.54% while today's RBNZ fix was at 4.50% and down just -1 bp. The UST 10yr yield is now just on 4.12% and down -12 bps from yesterday. Their 2yr is unchanged at 3.91% and down -9 bps, so that positive curve is still at +22 bps.

EQUITIES ALL TURN LOWER
The NZX50 is down -1.1% in late Tuesday trade. The ASX200 is down -1.0% in afternoon trade. Tokyo is down -2.2% in early Tuesday trade. Hong Kong is down -1.6%, and Shanghai is down -0.2% its open. Singapore has opened down -0.3%. Wall Street ended its Monday session down a sharp and pessimistic -1.8%..

OIL FALLS
The oil price is down -US$2.50, now just on US$68/bbl in the US, and on US$71/bbl for the international Brent price, all on expectations a coming recession will limit demand.

CARBON PRICE DIPS IN RANGE
The carbon price is still within its range, but down -50 bps at NZ$62.50/NZU on extended light volumes. The next release of units at the official auction is on March 19, 2025. But that auction's floor price is $68/NZU, so it is heading for a failure. See our new daily chart tracker of the NZU price for carbon, courtesy of emsTradepoint.

GOLD FIRMS AGAIN
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$17, now at US$2888/oz.

NZD HOLDS
The Kiwi dollar has held at 56.1 USc. Against the Aussie we are up +30 bps at 90.4 AUc. Against the euro we are down -30 bps at 53.5 euro cents. This all means the TWI-5 is just over 66 and little-changed from yesterday.

BITCOIN SINKS
The bitcoin price is down more than -10% from this time yesterday, now at US$863,350. The 'strategic reserve' fillip was very short lived. Volatility of the past 24 hours has again been extreme at just on +/- 5.9%.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

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