The total amount of residential term loans held by authorised Australian lenders reached $1.3 trillion at the end of March according to figures recently released by Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

The figures, contained in the regulator’s Quarterly Authorised Deposit-taking Institution (ADI) Property Exposures, show that residential term loans rose by $107.1 billion in the 12 months since 31 March 2014, which equates to a 9% increase.

Over that period, the amount of investment loans held by Australian ADIs has risen by $49.8 billion, an increase of 12.4%.

At the end of March investor loans held by ADIs totalled $450.2 billion, or 34.6% of the total loans held.

Owner-occupied loans also had a similar increase over the 12-month period, up by a 7.2% rise of $57.3 billion to $852 billion. 

 The vast majority of residential loans are held by ADIs with greater than $1 billion of residential term loans, with those lenders accounting for 98.4% of all residential loans. 

Those ADIs approved $82.3 billion worth of new loans for this year’s March quarter, a decrease of $10.9 billion (11.7%) on the quarter ending 31 December 2014 and an increase of $8.5 billion (11.5%) on the quarter ending 31 March 2014. 

Of that $82.3 billion, $51.9 billion (63%) were owner-occupied loans and $30.4 billion (37%) were investment loans.