Australian Property News

Investors pick up first homeowners’ slack

Posted on Wednesday, January 16 2013 at 10:34 AM

Investor confidence has strengthened but first homeowners haven’t followed suit, according to housing figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

New data shows that in New South Wales and Queensland, first homeowners are responding to recent cuts in State Government grants and stamp duty exemptions. First homebuyers, which usually comprise between 12 per cent and 15 per cent of home loans arranged in these states, fell to 4.2 per cent in NSW and 4.5 per cent in Queensland.

Conversely, investors are signalling confidence, with ABS housing figures for November showing that the number of finance commitments has increased by 0.4 per cent.

“In trend terms, increases were evident in Queensland, Western Australia, Victoria, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory,” says Peter Bushby, president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia.

“The largest increase was in the Northern Territory, up 2.1 per cent in trend terms whilst declines were recorded in South Australia (0.6 per cent) and Tasmania (0.5 per cent),” Bushby says.

The improvement in borrower confidence is also evident in figures from national mortgage broker Australian Finance Group (AFG) that show the volume of mortgages arranged by the company increased by 15 per cent in 2012 over 2011 numbers.

AFG has about 10 per cent of the national mortgage market, according to its data.