The Reserve Bank has revealed figures depicting a slower growth rate for housing investor loans in August.

This comes as the banks have introduced more stringent lending policies and increased interest rates for investors.

Housing investor credit increased by 10.7% in the year to August—a figure quicker than the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s annual cap of 10%.
Compared to the growth rate of 11.1% in the year to June, however, it is noticeably slower.

The RBA suggests that the figures were affected by a large proportion of customers who had their investor mortgages reclassified into owner-occupied loans.
Meanwhile, recent results of the August APRA Monthly Banking Statistics show that investment home loans have seen a month-on-month decline for the first time since 2011.

Indeed, investment lending by banks is at $535.5 billion, a decrease of $3.43 billion since July 2015.

On the other hand, owner-occupier home loans are increasing, with $843.2 billion borrowed from banks as at August 2015, which is up by over $15 billion from July 2015.

"Home loan lending by banks has continued to grow for owner-occupied loans, hitting the highest level of borrowing ever recorded,” said Michelle Hutchinson, Money Expert at finder.com.au.

“However, we saw a decline for investment lending, which could be a result of borrowers switching the status of their home loans to owner-occupied to avoid the recent hikes to some investment home loan rates.”


 

Collections: