NSW mortgages grew 15% in September

According to the September 2020 figures from NSW Land Registry Services, there were 13,589 new mortgages registered last month.

This is the highest level of new mortgages registered since December 2019 and reflects figures showing Q1 of FY21 was the second highest for mortgage registrations on the NSW Land Titles Register in the past two years. 

In the second edition of the Mortgage Share Insights: Residential Mortgage Activity report, which analyses all new and refinanced mortgages held against residential properties listed on the NSW Land Title Register, it was also found that there was a continuing trend of refinancing away from foreign banks and non-banks. 

Building on a trend marked in the report for August 2020, major banks continued their resurgence, taking 65.2 per cent of all new mortgages registered and 59.7 per cent of refinances.

This bucked the trend that was being seen before COVID-19 hit, when major banks had been losing market share.

Looking at the most recent stats, major banks saw 65.8 per cent of all new mortgage volume (both new and refinances) registered in NSW in September 2020. This was up 5.7 percentage points compared with September 2019.

Other domestic banks saw their mortgage volumes return to pre-COVID-19 levels, accounting for 14.6 per cent of all mortgage activity appearing on the NSW Land Titles Register in September 2020. This was a 10.1 per cent increase compared with September 2019.

In September 2020, customer-owned banks also increased their share of NSW mortgage activity, taking 8.9 per cent of all mortgages  largely driven by new mortgages, which increased by 45.2 per cent in September when compared with the same month last year.

Speaking of the figures, the director of analytics and insights at NSW Land Registry Services, Jerry Goldfried, said September was a strong month for mortgage activity recorded on titles in NSW.

“Major banks continue to perform stronger in the refinance space during COVID-19. And this month, other domestic banks have turned around their COVID-19 refinancing slide to see numbers strengthen in September,” he said.

While national figures for the month of September have not yet been released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the latest figures (for August 2020) showed that there had been an unprecedented spike in owner-occupied demand.

This spike lifted the value of home loan approvals to a record high in August 2020, according to the ABS.

The ABS Lending Indicators data for August 2020 revealed that the total value of home loan approvals (seasonally adjusted) surged 12.6 per cent in August to $21.2 billion.

Indeed, the value of owner-occupied home loan commitments increased in all states and territories, with the largest increases recorded in Victoria, Queensland and NSW.

[Related: Mortgage approvals soar to new heights]