Website: Reserve Bank of New Zealand

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Price: Free
Overall rating: 3
Website: www.rbnz.govt.nz

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For number crunchers, the Reserve Bank’s (RB) website is a veritable treasure trove.

It’s widely believed that Statistics New Zealand is the clearinghouse for all statistical data. But the RB is another source that stats-heads shouldn’t overlook.

The RB’s role is to:
· Operate monetary policy to maintain price stability
· Promote a sound and efficient financial system
· Meet the currency needs of the public.

As a result the RB’s decisions affect property investors directly, through the official cash rate (OCR) on which mortgage rates are based, and indirectly through its manipulation of the economy and currency.

When the RB makes decisions or releases information, that information is available on the website in a variety of forms. When a press release is issued, investors can often also find on the website a policy assessment, the full statement, and/or the accompanying data. With the OCR announcements, for example, the downloadable Excel spreadsheet contains an awful lot of interesting data that a property investor could extrapolate from dating back more than a decade and sometimes projecting right up until 2010. This includes estimates of:
· GDP growth
· OCR predictions
· private sector consumption and house price inflation
· real residential investment
· CPI inflation
· equity withdrawal from houses and farms
· exports volume growth
· dwelling consents
· REINZ house sales per month
· employment statistics
· longer term inflation expectations.

Anyone good with a spreadsheet or manipulating data by other means could have a field day with this behemoth of a website and its associated Excel downloads.

It can be well worth reading the full statements accompanying RB decisions. For example, when the OCR, which has a follow on effect on mortgage rates, was lifted recently the accompanying policy assessment published on the website made it quite clear the bank was considering tightening tax rules applying to property investment and to bank capital requirements when lending to investors.

Of particular interest to investors are the money, credit and financial statistics, and the economic indicators series of data. But the A-Z of statistics page is worth poking your nose through. For example, one of several links under mortgage interest rates included “key graphs”, which turned out to be a series of up-to-date graphs which enabled you to visualise fixed versus floating rates over a period of time. Another covered household debt. The “download data” link associated with many of the links on the website takes you to a spreadsheet, documenting the data back to 1964.

As well as the OCR, there is a mountain of information on the website about 90-day rates, which might well be of interest to readers with a real penchant for statistics.

Not all of the data is the RB’s own. Some comes from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, Statistics New Zealand, Quotable Value and other sources. But the presentation of this data often gives it another spin.

A useful way of keeping tabs on what the RB is up to is to check out the advance release calendar on its website, which lists important diary events over the coming month.

As well as statistics, the site has a wealth of articles explaining everything from how fiscal policy affects the wider economy to the ownership, size, and impact of family trusts. The publications section gives a good indication into what the country’s central bank is thinking.

If you want to know where the economy is headed, it’s well worth reading the RB Bulletins. The March 2007 edition, for example, had articles about New Zealand’s productivity performance and prospects, and global inflation.

Hidden in the “Seminars and Workshops” section of the website are PDF versions of papers given at RB events. Some of the information, such as a workshop on household savings rates, will be of use to investors.

Information on the website is free. It’s even possible to order a number of hard copy publications from the website at no charge.

If you can’t find what you want, it’s worth using the search function on terms such as ‘property investment’, ‘mortgages’, etc.

There’s a free email newsletter available if you want to keep up-to-date with monetary policy statements, news releases, OCR announcements and other public statements as they are posted on the website.

On the downside, the RBNZ’s website can be very difficult to navigate. Some spectacularly useful information is well buried and you need to be pretty intrepid to find it.

Several times I chanced upon really interesting information, but couldn’t navigate my way back there for love nor money.

Interesting information is often buried. I was perusing the introduction to staff member Cath Sleeman, for example, when I found a link to an article about Eurokiwi and Uridashi bonds, which detailed their effect on borrowing and mortgage interest rates. Very interesting, but virtually impossible to find.

Even when you’ve located something to download, it isn’t always straightforward as to what you’re seeing. For example, what are “total household claims”? You need to read the “series description” to find a plain English explanation. Having said that, this isn’t a consumer website. It exists to publish vast quantities of information produced by the brains of the RB and is aimed at the multiple markets of: “students, journalists, academics, retail banks, other Government departments, numismatics and anyone else who is interested”.

Finally there is no regional data on this website, just national data.
Contact: 04 472 2029
System requirements: Internet access, Microsoft Excel, Adobe PDF reader.

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Verdict: Lots of useful information if you’ve got time for a good poke around.
Pros: Raw data as well as articles explaining what it all means.
Cons: Some of the best stuff is really well hidden.

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