The June housing finance figures were just terrible.
Unlike the huge rise in jobs and job ads, the number of housing finance commitments has tumbled more than 25% from May 2009 to June of this year.
In fact the figures raise the question of just how depressed the home building and construction sector would be without the first home buyers’ tax breaks and the social housing building campaign from the two stimulus packages in 2008 and 2009.
And that in turns confirms that employment growth and job ads would not have been as strong, and unemployment in and around the building and construction industry, would have been higher.
The total number of loans for owner occupied homes dropped 3.9% in June, reversing a revised 3% increase in May.
The total number of housing loans has now fallen in 10 of the last 12 months.
The monthly decline took the total number of loans for June to 46,420, the lowest since 2001. This includes new and pre-loved homes, so to speak.
The market had been looking for a 2% fall.
But the ABS reported that the number of finance commitments for the purchase of established dwellings for owner occupation, seasonally adjusted, fell 3.7% in June 2010, to the lowest number since October 2000.
And it goes on from there.
"In seasonally adjusted terms, the total value of dwelling finance commitments excluding alterations and additions decreased 1.9%; the number of owner occupied housing commitments excluding refinancing seasonally adjusted fell 5.1% in June 2010; the number of finance commitments for the construction of dwellings for owner occupation seasonally adjusted fell 5.0% in June 2010; the number of finance commitments for the purchase of new dwellings for owner occupation seasonally adjusted fell 4.5% in June 2010; the number of owner occupied dwellings financed by banks seasonally adjusted series fell 3.7% in June 2010", the ABS reported.
The ABS said "the number of owner occupied dwellings financed by non-banks seasonally adjusted for the number of owner occupied dwellings financed by non-banks fell 5.3% in June 2010. The number of commitments for owner occupied dwellings financed by permanent building societies seasonally adjusted fell 5.0% in June 2010; the value of investment housing commitments seasonally adjusted fell 3.6% in June 2010."
The ABS said that the seasonally adjusted number of owner occupied housing commitments, in seasonally adjusted terms, fell in all states and territories in June.
They fell by 4.9% in NSW, were flat in Victoria, dropped by 4.6% in Queensland and by 6.4% in South Australia and 2.6% in WA.
About the only thing to rise was the size of the average loan for all owner occupied loans which went up $3,700 to $285,300 in the month.
With the Commonwealth Bank reporting tomorrow (it’s either the first or second ranked housing lending), analysts are interested to see its mortgage lending data to see if it lost or gained market share.
By these figures, it was tough in June for all financiers.
