New mortgage lending still slim
Although new mortgage lending was up to $1.3 billion in March from $1.1 billion in February, it was an annual drop of 44%, the latest Reserve Bank figures show.
Investors accounted for 17% of new mortgage commitments down from 18.5% in February, making this the first drop since December last year and lending to investors with high loan-to-value ratios (LVRs) of 60% rose from 31.4% in February to 32.1% in March.
Total monthly new mortgage lending topped $7.3 billion in March, up $1.6 billion, or 27.5%, from February but well down on the all-time high of $10.4 billion advanced in the same month last year, when the market had a huge head of steam.
While new the new mortgages value is 17.7% higher than in March 2020, the Reserve Bank says the composition is quite different. Fewer borrowers took out mortgages, but the average size of loans has risen 44.5%. In March the number of mortgages advanced was down by 18.6% from 22,631 in March 2020 to 18,424.
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