
First-home buyers; it's tough but there is a way
First-home buyers struggling to get on the property ladder, especially in Auckland's sizzling-hot market, are turning to new builds, which fall outside the high loan-to-value-ratio restrictions imposed on the banks. The Reserve Bank's LVR rules, brought in to cool down the housing market in 2013, limit banks to having no more than 10 per cent of their new residential mortgage lending on deposits of less than 20 per cent. New builds were later exempted from the restrictions pr