The housing market’s strong 2015 performance continued during April with
AFG processing a record amount of mortgages for the month.
The aggregator processed a total of $4,380 million in mortgages over April. This compares with $3,674 million in April 2014.
In keeping with seasonal trends, the figure is somewhat lower than the $5,236 million recorded for March, because of the Easter holidays, when property markets are typically more subdued.
The result reflected increasing Victoria investor activity, combined with already strong NSW investor activity. AFG processed a higher proportion of home loans for investors in Victoria last month than ever before at 40.9%, up from 36.7% in March 2015, and 36.9% in April 2014.
In NSW, the proportion of investor mortgages remained around its all-time high of 52.8% of applications.
“Investor activity in both Sydney and Melbourne is now at the highest levels we have recorded in 21 years,” Mark Hewitt, General Manager of Sales and Operations at AFG said.
“Elsewhere it’s a different story - for example in Western Australia, where first home buyers comprise a much larger proportion of buyers than elsewhere, property investment cooled somewhat last month.”
First home buyer figures remained at low levels across all of Australia, except for WA, comprising just 2% of new mortgages in NSW, 6.4% in SA, 7.7% in QLD, 8.9% in VIC and 18% in WA.
