Home loan demand gains ground

CoreLogic’s Property Market Indicator Summary for the week ending 24 January has revealed that nationally, mortgage market activity dropped 36.9 per cent month-on-month.

While this is still a substantial fall, it is an improvement on previous weeks’ figures, when home loan activity fell 47.0 per cent for the week ending 17 January, and 40.2 per cent for the week ending 10 January.

NSW has once recorded the largest fall in activity, plunging by 47.3 per cent month-on-month. However, this is an improvement from the week ending 17 January, when activity plummeted by 57.2 per cent month-on-month.

Every other state across Australia has posted a decline in home loan activity, according to CoreLogic’s weekly figures.

Activity fell by 35.6 per cent in South Australia, 33.5 per cent in Victoria, 32.6 per cent in Tasmania and 31.6 per cent in Queensland. The decline in Western Australia was comparatively subdued, with home loan activity falling by 21.4 per cent month-on-month, figures have revealed.

There has been a marginal gain in capital city properties listed for sale, with the number of new listings increasing by 0.1 per cent nationally over the last 12 months. However, the number of total listings has declined by 20.5 per cent over this period.

Melbourne has continued to gain ground in properties listed for sale after Victoria faced two extended periods of lockdown in 2020 to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

The number of new listings has jumped by 20.8 per cent over the 12-month period, while the number of total listings has grown by 7.7 per cent over this period.

The total number of listings has declined across all other capital cities over the 12-month period, while Perth has posted a 2.2 per cent growth in the number of new listings over this period.

While acknowledging that the flow of data has remained subdued during the holiday period thus far, CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless previously said that he is expecting that the market would “recommence where it left off in late 2020, where momentum was building in both activity and capital gains”.

[Related: Bumper settlement volumes recorded in December]

Malavika Santhebennur is the features editor on the mortgages titles at Momentum Media.

Before joining the team in 2019, Malavika held roles with Money Management and Benchmark Media. She has been writing about financial services for the past six years.