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Investor finance commitments have been growing at almost three times the rate of owner-occupied mortgages.
There were $28 billion of housing finance commitments in August, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That marked a 17.5 per cent rise on the previous year.
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The owner-occupied share of those finance commitments rose 10.6 per cent to $16.6 billion, while the investor share jumped 29.3 per cent to $11.4 billion.
There were also 51,787 owner-occupied housing finance commitments in August, which represented an annual increase of 3.8 per cent.
The number of commitments to buy established homes rose 2.8 per cent to 42,739, the number of commitments to buy new homes rose 0.1 per cent to 2,952 and the number of commitments to build homes rose 13.0 per cent to 6,096.
First home buyers constituted 11.8 per cent of owner-occupied commitments in August, compared to 13.7 per cent the previous year.
Their average loan size grew 5.0 per cent to $300,400. Mortgage Choice spokesperson Jessica Darnbrough said while the property market should continue to be relatively strong in terms of values, she wouldn’t be surprised to see the demand for home loans remain flat.
“While spring is a notoriously hot season for the property market, preliminary data shows values climbed just 0.1 per cent in September, which could mean demand for properties simply isn’t as strong as it has been in previous months,” she said.
[Related: July statistics]
