Home Loan Serviceability

How much can I borrow for investment property?

When it comes to how much you can borrow for investment property, banks need to calculate your loan servicing. The way banks calculate loan servicing can be quite a different picture from our real profit and loss account. What does this mean is that you can be optimistic about how much you can borrow for investment property before max out your borrowing capacity? Here's an example to illustrate how New Zealand banks work out your home loan serviceability for investment property.

In the scenario above, the property investor sees positive cash flow of $1260 whereas bank does not think you can service $520k due to the cashflow deficit. Why?

What is serviceability rate?

New Zealand banks use mortgage serviceability rate of 7.5% -7.8% to assess the borrowing power of borrowers to repay their home loan, regardless the actual current New Zealand interest rates are. The reason for them to use serviceability rate that much higher is because once they approve the home loan, they commit to you for 25- 30 years. New Zealand mortgage interest rates can fluctuate. Currently, the interest rates are historically low, but that does not mean it can’t go up to 10% (in fact it happened in GFC).

How do New Zealand banks work out serviceability?

Banks use P&I over 30 years basis whether your loan is on Interest only or not. Your income needs to work on the P&I basis as the interest-only period is normally only 5 years.

Please note for existing lending, some banks such as BNZ works off residual loan terms as opposed to over 30 years meaning the existing loan commitments are higher in bank’s view and leaving less surplus for you to borrow more loans.

Do banks take rent into consideration?

The banks only consider 75% of the gross rent as a rough guide to take into account vacancy and operating expenses.

The above should give you some insights into how banks assess the debt servicing and help you better plan and set strategies.