The mortgage market is a huge beast. In New Zealand, there are more than $300 billion of residential mortgages, with more than $10b of first-home lending every year.

For a lending market this big, it seems strange that nearly all home lending is on one or two-year fixed rates. Why is this? And why aren’t more borrowers on either floating rate mortgages, or ones fixed for more than one or two years?

In this article, Sam Stubbs looks at why borrowers in other developed countries have lower rates, and rates that are fixed for longer times.

Read the full article on Stuff here.