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The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA) State of the States (SOTS) October 2023 report has found that housing finance commitments remained above decade averages with the exception of the Northern Territory.
According to CBA, the measure used was the trend value of owner-occupier housing finance commitments excluding refinancing, which was compared to the decade average of each state and territory up until August 2023.
The SOTS report found that Queensland retained the top spot among the states and territories, with the value of home loans up by 15.3 per cent on the long-term average.
This was followed by South Australia, up by 14.9 per cent on the decade average, Tasmania (10.4 per cent), Western Australia (10.2 per cent), Victoria (8.6 per cent), NSW (8.2 per cent) and ACT (3.2 per cent).
Meanwhile, the NT remained the weakest for housing finance, as commitments slumped to 10.4 per cent below the decade average.
However, housing finance commitments were still down in annual terms. The NT once again recorded the largest decline in this category, with housing finance commitments down 27.3 per cent annually.
The nation’s capital recorded a decline of 26.4 per cent, followed by Victoria down by 15.7 per cent, Tasmania by 13.9 per cent, Queensland by 9.7 per cent and NSW by 9.6 per cent.
Western Australia and South Australia saw the lowest annual declines in housing finance, down by 6.9 per cent and 7.7 per cent, respectively.
Owner-occupier loans lift for the first time in three months
The latest Lending Indicators data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found that new home loan lending began to increase again following three months of softening in new mortgage lending amid the refinancing boom.
The data for August 2023 found that there were 25,404 new owner-occupier mortgages written during this period, marking the highest figure since May 2023 when a total of 26,301 owner-occupier mortgages were written.
According to the ABS, NSW had the greatest value of owner-occupier borrowings, up 2.1 per cent to just over $5 billion, followed by Victoria with a 4 per cent increase to $4.5 billion, Queensland at $3.1 billion and Western Australia at $1.7 billion.
Furthermore, South Australia surpassed the $1 billion mark for its overall value of owner-occupier borrowings, up 12.9 per cent over August.
ACT was the only state or territory that saw owner-occupier lending fall, down 3.3 per cent to $400 million in August.
[RELATED: New OO loans increase for the first time since May]
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