Property investors are lending record amounts of money for home purchases amid a decline in first-time home-buying lenders.
Investors accounted for two in every five home loans from July to September, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Wednesday, sparking calls for the Albanian government to force banks to put the brakes on landlord lending.
More than 57,000 investors borrowed almost $ 40bn to buy houses in three months, a 17.6% increase in the combined amount of loans in three months and a 13.6% increase in new investment loans.
First home buyer numbers rose just 2.3% in the September Quarter compared to the previous three months, but fell 0.23% overall last year compared to the previous year.
Ownership loan figures increased by just 2% on a quarterly basis, ABS data showed.
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Homeowner loans have increased steadily since March 2023 at a faster rate than owner-occupied loans. Mish Tan, the Head of Financial Services, has prompted the acceleration in 2025 of interest rates and low vacancy rates in rental housing.
The Reserve Bank in November found that investment credit was growing at its fastest pace since 2015, which comes even before the RBA triples interest rates by 2025.
DAPURID RAVES IN Investment Lending in 2014 prompted the Australian Prudatential regulation Authulation Authod to treat the annual growth of the amount of 10% as a risk of cutting the banks.
Wednesday’s data showed investment spending nearly doubled, prompting Greens Senator Barbara Pocock to call for apra intervention.
“We need to be motivated by a profitable credit market for property investors,” he said.
Pocock on Wednesday wrote to the head of Apra, John Lonsdale, urging him to “get the poterbuke”, and to the treasury, encouraging him to direct Apra.
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Regulatory intervention in the mid-2010s dragged down house prices and it can do it again, according to the head of cottality research, Eliza Owen.
Home prices recorded their fastest monthly increase in two years in October, at 1.1% or a median of $10,000 in 2025, the data showed.
The governor of the RBA, Michele Ballock, said that the intervention in November will help to maintain the housing market in the event that it is not necessary.
An APRA spokesman said in October the regulator was looking for risky lending and discussed limits on investor, interest-only-swosit loans to banks.
The annual results of Westpac and NAB in early November showed investors had more than doubled in new home loans in the two months to September.
Delivering the result, the chief executive of Westpac, Anthony Miller, said that investors are “attractive” customers and the bank will continue to chase them with low interest rates on loans.
“We just have to be … careful with the outlook and the risks that come from going too aggressively in a particular area, but you think we’ve got the balance right,” Miller said.