DTIs not needed right now - RBNZ

Questioning at the Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) press conference Thursday morning kept returning to the prospect of DTIs being introduced as a curb on the housing market.

Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler said that his preference would be to have DTIs as part of the bank’s macro-prudential arsenal already.

“A lot of countries have used DTIs successfully and they can be very helpful if managed well. But, there can always be unintended consequences.”

To that end, the Reserve Bank has done a lot of research, including collecting data from the banks, on DTIs and has talked to government about the possibility of DTIs being included in their toolkit.