The total value of loans changed from investor to owner-occupier amounted to $1.2 billion in October 2017, according to the RBA.
The latest financial aggregates statistics release from the Reserve Bank of Australia reveals that the net value of switching of loan purpose from investor to owner-occupier totalled $60 billion over the period of July 2015 to October 2017.
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Of this, $1.2 billion of loans were switched in October 2017.
The RBA stated that the reason for this is down to “the introduction of an interest rate differential between housing loans to investors and owner-occupiers in mid-2015”.
While the growth rates in the release were adjusted to remove the effect of loan purpose changes, they show that owner-occupier lending growth has dropped while invest lending has increased.
For the 12 months ending October 2017, owner-occupier lending grew to 6.3 per cent (seasonally adjusted), down from the 7.1 per cent for the 12 months ending October 2016.
Conversely, the growth in investor lending grew from 5.2 per cent in the year ending October 2016 to 6.9 per cent for the comparative period this year.
Comparing the figures to the previous release, housing credit dropped to 6.5 per cent in the 12 months ending October 2017, down from 6.6 per cent in September.
[Related: Heritage Bank resumes investor lending]