During September, investors traded places with owner-occupiers in many of the eastern states. A slight cooling off in the Queensland market saw the proportion of investors taking out finance drop from 30.9% to 24.1% over the month. Nevertheless, investment boom state Western Australia continued to be popular - in September 45.6% of all loans were taken out to purchase an investment property. "While WA is still fired up, investors are a lot less confident about New South Wales and Queensland, and the last interest rate rise has probably made them even more reluctant," says Malcolm Watkins, executive director of AFG. Average mortgage sizes actually dropped in NSW and QLD, by $3,000 and $8,000 respectively during September. Interestingly, these states have traditionally boasted the highest loan to valuation (LVR) ratios and along with South Australia, are the only states to have reported increases in average LVR. In August, the average loan in NSW was for 71.9% of the entire property's value, which grew to 76.1% in September, QLD showed a similar pattern, with average LVR up nearly 5% to 72.0%. Victoria and WA experienced the reverse effect, with average LVR shrinking from 77.6% to 68.6% and 65.7% to 59.7% respectively.

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