The ABS released housing finance data for September which showed an improvement in the number of home loans being taken by owner occupiers. Over the month total owner occupier finance commitments increased by 1.3% which was the third successive month in which they have improved. The improvement in this number was due to a 0.5% increase in finance for construction of new dwellings and a 1.6% increase in finance for the purchase of established dwellings. The rises were offset by a -3.2% fall in commitments for the purchase of new dwellings. Overall it is encouraging to see some recent improvement however, total owner occupier commitments are almost 25% lower than at the same time last year. Looking at the total value of finance commitments, both owner occupier (0.6%) and investment (1.7%) commitments improved during the month. Although more homes are being financed, owner occupiers are borrowing less with the average first home buyer loan size falling by -1.3% for the month and non-first home buyer loan sizes down by -0.8%. The data also shows there has been a slight improvement in first home buyer numbers; they now account for 15.9% of all owner occupier finance commitments up from 15.5% last month.

Westpac and the Melbourne Institute released the November results of their monthly Consumer Confidence Survey this week and the index recorded a fall of -5.3% over the month. The Index is currently recorded at 110.7 points and despite the fall over the month it remains well above 100 points indicating that consumers remain more optimistic than pessimistic. A subset of the consumer confidence data is the Time to Buy a Dwelling Index. With property value growth slowing and interest rates having been raised in early November the Index fell by -7.4% during the month. The Index is now recorded at 102.2 points which indicates that consumers are only slightly more optimistic than pessimistic about it being a good time to buy residential property.