This comes as the banks have introduced more stringent lending policies and increased interest rates for investors.
Housing investor credit increased by 10.7% in the year to August—a figure quicker than the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s annual cap of 10%.
Compared to the growth rate of 11.1% in the year to June, however, it is noticeably slower.
The RBA suggests that the figures were affected by a large proportion of customers who had their investor mortgages reclassified into owner-occupied loans.
Meanwhile, recent results of the August APRA Monthly Banking Statistics show that investment home loans have seen a month-on-month decline for the first time since 2011.
Indeed, investment lending by banks is at $535.5 billion, a decrease of $3.43 billion since July 2015.
On the other hand, owner-occupier home loans are increasing, with $843.2 billion borrowed from banks as at August 2015, which is up by over $15 billion from July 2015.
"Home loan lending by banks has continued to grow for owner-occupied loans, hitting the highest level of borrowing ever recorded,” said Michelle Hutchinson, Money Expert at finder.com.au.
“However, we saw a decline for investment lending, which could be a result of borrowers switching the status of their home loans to owner-occupied to avoid the recent hikes to some investment home loan rates.”
Collections: Mortgage News
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