Investment loans make up almost one-third of NZ mortgages 12 November 2014 4:57PM Bernard Hickey New Reserve Bank of New Zealand figures showed residential rental property investors were responsible for NZ$1.2 billion, or 29 per cent, of all new mortgage lending in September.The RBNZ released the breakdown of types of mortgage lending for the first time on Tuesday, including two months of data in the release. It showed first-home buyers were behind NZ$430 million, or ten per cent, of the NZ$4.3 billion of new mortgage lending in September.Other owner-occupiers accounted for NZ$2.5 billion, or 59.5 per cent, of total new lending in September.These are the first comprehensive figures showing the relative sizes of the different types of home buyers. They showed rental property investors and first-home buyers to be both borrowing proportionally less than suggested by previous estimates. An NZIER analysis in July of CoreLogic data on property transactions in the first half of 2014 found that 45 per cent of homes were bought by rental property investors, while 19 per cent were bought by first-home buyers. Critics of the RBNZ's high loan-to-value ratio speed limit, a type of macro-prudential control, have argued the limit hit first home buyers harder than rental investors because first home buyers typically had less equity to use when buying a house.