Investors slowly return to the market

Investors are slowly increasing their presence in the housing market, with the value of loan commitments to landlords rising 6% during the September quarter, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show.

There was a sharp rise in overall loan commitments during the quarter. While investors still lag behind owner occupiers, their financing commitments are increasingly improving since the market turnaround began in May.

"Growth in investment lending hasn't been quite as strong; however, the value of investment loan commitments was up 6.0% over the September quarter, which was the fastest gain since the December quarter of 2016," said CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless.

Also read: Are property investors nervous?

However, investors now comprise the lowest portion of housing loan commitments since the ABS records commenced in 2003, currently tracking at 24.8% of the overall value of new mortgage commitments.

When the first round of macro-prudential rules was introduced in December 2014, investors made up 43% of the national mortgage demand.

"The trends in housing credit are similar across the states, with the value of owner-occupier loan commitments generally outpacing investors," Lawless said.

New South Wales has the largest concentration of investment activity across the states, with investors taking up 30.5% of mortgage demand based on value. In Victoria, investors comprised 25.2% of mortgage demand during the quarter.

Western Australia and Queensland posted the lowest investor share.

The table below shows the growth in investor lending in each state: