Buried by yesterday’s wash up of the federal election outcome and the speculation about Fosters, the July home loan approvals data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics didn’t quite get the attention they probably deserved.
After months of indifferent reports, the figures were surprisingly better than expected and had the usual collection of analysts chanting "rate rise looms”.
That’s nothing of the sort and today’s August jobs figures will be far more important to the Reserve Bank’s way of thinking.
But the ABS data showed a 1.7% rise in housing finance commitments to 47,511, seasonally adjusted, better than the market forecast of a 1% rise.
That was a lot better than the revised 3.2% fall in June, which was much worse than the 1.9% drop initially reported last month.
The ABS said the seasonally adjusted estimates rose in all states and territories except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Encouragingly, the total value of loans rose 0.7% to $20.9 billion in July, with the value of lending to owner-occupiers up 2.3% and offsetting a 2.3% fall in value of loans to investors.
First-home buyers accounted for 16.1% of dwellings that were financed in July, up from 16% in June and down from 25.3% from a year ago because the incentives helping them have long expired.
The number of owner-occupied housing loans approved (but not involving refinancing) rose 0.9%, another small positive.
Seasonally adjusted, and including refinancings the number of commitments to buy established houses rose 2.0% (but were down 1.5% for the construction of a new house, and up 1.5% for the purchase of a new home).
So a few more small positives.
