The RBA released their Financial Aggregates for May 2016. Total housing grew by 0.5% in May, compared with 0.4% in April. Business lending grew by 0.3%, compared with 0.8% in April. Personal credit fell again by 0.1%. Housing lending overall lifted by $7.5bn, of which $6.5 bn was for owner occupation and $0.9bn for investor loans. Total housing loans are now $1.56 trillion, another record and comprise 61% of all loans outstanding.
Annual growth rates for home lending is 6.5%, compared with 6.2% in May 2015, Business was 7.1%, compared with 5.3% last year, and Personal lending was down 1.1% to May 2016, compared with up 1.1% this time last year.
A further $1.1 bn of loans were switched between owner occupied and investment housing loan categories.
Following the introduction of an interest rate differential between housing loans to investors and owner-occupiers in mid-2015, a number of borrowers have changed the purpose of their existing loan; the net value of switching of loan purpose from investor to owner-occupier is estimated to have been $41 billion over the period of July 2015 to May 2016 of which $1.1 billion occurred in May. These changes are reflected in the level of owner-occupier and investor credit outstanding. However, growth rates for these series have been adjusted to remove the effect of loan purpose changes.
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