Sharing something I built over a year ago for NZ home buyers

Backstory is boring but I’ll lay it out anyway - When my partner and I were sorting our first loan in 2024 we ended up with the classic spreadsheet hell trying to work out whether 1yr or 2yr made more sense, and every calculator online only did one bank at a time. So I started building something for us and decided to share it with all. It is equally useful for both first-home buyers and existing homeowners.

It’s https://ratemate.co.nz

What it does:
- Live rates from ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Westpac, Kiwibank, TSB, SBS and Co-op, updated daily
- Nine years of historical rates behind that, so you can see where today’s 1yr actually sits against the last decade instead of guessing
- You don’t have to sit there comparing 100 combinations yourself. You tell it what matters to you, lowest repayments, least interest overall, certainty, whatever, and it narrows it down to two or three combos that fit and shows you the numbers side by side
- You can also build your own scenarios if you’ve got something specific in mind, like a particular split or a rate you’ve been quoted, and compare those against the rest
- Break fee estimate and break-even timeline, so you can see how long it takes for the savings to cover the cost of switching
- Split loan modelling, offset modelling, extra repayment modelling
- Cashback vs switching costs, since the $5k cashback often doesn’t cover what you think it covers.

It’s been up for over a year now and sits at close to 1000 monthly active users.

Usual caveat: it’s a calculator, not financial advice. Numbers are estimates, your bank does the real break fee, and a broker is still worth talking to. It’s just meant to save you the spreadsheet stage so you turn up to that conversation knowing what you’re asking for.