P.O.S.B. cuts back second mortgage limit

Press, 1 March 1984, Page 2

P.O.S.B. cuts back second mortgage limit

The Post Office Savings Bank has cut the amount it will lend on second mortgage from $15,000 to $7OOO.

It has also reduced the maximum that can be borrowed as a personal loan secured by a mortgage from $5OOO to $3OOO.

The Postmaster-General, Mr Talbot, said that the new limits, effective immediately, were “a result of the requirement that financial institutions restrict growth in lending to 1 per cent a month.”

The manager of the Post Office Savings Bank in Christchurch, Mr George Ware, said yesterday that it had made 289 secondmortgage advances with an average value of $9472 since September 1 last year. Mr Talbot said that the average amount throughout New . Zealand was “currently $10,000.” The president of the Can-

terbury and Westland branch of the Real Estate Institute, Mr James Grant, said that while the change would have some impact on the property market, it would not “put up the shutters.”

He said it was “just another hiccup in the system” compared with the effect that the Housing Corporation’s refusal to lend on existing homes had had. “That knocked us harder than anything,” he said. However, he said that his firm had recorded better sales figures this January and February than it had in those months for the last 15 years and that other agents had also reported that they were doing well. No change has been made to the Post Office’s lending criteria on any loan or to the amount that may be obtained on first mortgage by holders of matured home ownership accounts.