At $405,029, the average size of new mortgages written in June was $77,711 above the same month the previous year.
As for who did the borrowing, 63 per cent of new lending went to owner-occupiers, 18 per cent to first-home buyers, 17 per cent to investors and the remainder to businesses.
This divide has been fairly consistent since around May 2021 when the RBNZ tightened loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions for investors. These restrictions, which were temporarily removed in 2020, require most investors to have deposits of at least 40 per cent.
When the RBNZ tightened LVR restrictions for owner-occupiers in November 2021, there was some concern first-home buyers would be squeezed out of the market.
Indeed, new high-LVR lending (lending to people with small deposits) dropped off. It disproportionately affected first-home buyers to begin with, but first-home buyers secured a decent portion of new high-LVR lending in June (29 per cent).
Towards the end of June, the country's major banks announced they were either temporarily halting or curtailing new high-LVR lending.
The extent to which these moves are restricting mortgage lending is yet to be seen.
Higher mortgages rates and an update to consumer lending rules (the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act) are the among the factors slowing the housing market.