Australia: Housing finance approvals soften further - Westpac

Sandeep Kanihama FXStreet Contributor

Matthew Hassan, Research Analyst at Westpac, points out that Australian housing finance approvals continued to soften in September as the headline number of owner occupier loans declined 1% in line with the consensus forecast.

Key Quotes

“Ex refinancing, the decline was a milder 0.5%mth.”

“The value of loans was considerably weaker. In particular the value of owner occupier loans dropped 4.2%mth to be down 8% in the space of two months. With the number of approvals showing much milder declines, the implied average loan size has declined notably, by 3.6% since May, or $14.6k.”

“The combined total value of housing finance approvals including investors but excluding owner occupier refi, fell 3.7% to be down 14.2%yr.”

“Overall, the finance data shows continued soft conditions, particularly across the owner occupier segment where tighter lending standards look to now be the main source of weakness.”

Author

Sandeep Kanihama

FXStreet Contributor

Sandeep Kanihama is an FX Editor and Analyst with FXstreet having principally focus area on Asia and European markets with commodity, currency and equities coverage. He is stationed in the Indian capital city of Delhi.

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