Australian lenders holding 9% more home loans than a year ago

Australian mortgage providers had $1.25 trillion worth of housing loans on their books at the end of September, up 9% compared with the year before, according to the latest data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

This included $85.4 billion of new loans issued in the September quarter, which was 11.9% more than the value of new mortgages issued in the same quarter of 2013.

Major banks held just over $1 trillion of the residential loans, having lifted the size of their mortgage books by 8.7% over the year.

Other domestic banks increased their total loan books by 15% to $135.3 billion at the end of September. APRA noted that this jump in mortgages was partly due to the conversion of eight credit unions and one building society to banks during the year. However, separate research by mortgage broking network AFG, the AFG quarterly Competition Index, shows non-major banks did increase their market share of people who refinanced their mortgages.

Foreign subsidiary banks held $54.9 billion worth of residential mortgages, up 5.8% from September 30, 2013, APRA reported. 

In total, there were 5.2 million housing loans outstanding at the end of September, APRA’s data shows. The average balance was $239,000, up from $232,000 in September 2013.

Two thirds of the loans outstanding – $825 billion worth – were to owner occupiers. This was 7.6% more than at the same time in 2013. The remaining $425.3 billion worth of home loans were to investors, an increase of 11.9% compared with the year before.

Australian lenders also had $225.5 billion in commercial property loans at the end of September 2014, down by 0.4% from June 30, 2014 but 6.4% more than in September 2013, APRA figures show.

Commercial property located within Australia accounted for 83.1% of all commercial property exposures. Most of the properties were offices and retail property, which represented 30.3% and 22.4% of all exposures respectively.