Australian August housing finance
Home loans beat at +1.0% m/m
- expected 0.5%, prior was 2.8%, revised from 2.9%
Investment lending 4.3% m/m ... a bounce back and not something the Reserve Bank of Australia will be happy with
- prior was -3.7%, revised from -3.9%
Owner-occupied loan value 0.9% m/m
- prior was 1.3%, revised from 0.9%
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Initial take via Westpac (in summary):
The value of housing finance approvals to investors posted a surprisingly strong 4.3% gain, more than reversing July's pull back to be up 6.5%yr.
Overall,
the total value of loans rose 1.9%mth to be up 12.3%yr. This is in
notable contrast to other market measures - auction clearance rates,
turnover and prices - that point to a material slowdown in residential
activity along the lines of that seen in 2015.
The divergence between
market conditions and housing finance may be an indirect indication
that weaker foreign buyer demand (not captured by the housing finance
data) accounts for a significant part of the slowdown in 2017.
