Pack your bags for Canberra and Melbourne

ACT and Victoria trump New South Wales on housing finance in CommSec’s latest ‘State of the States’ report

Pack your bags for Canberra and Melbourne
ACT and Victoria trump New South Wales on housing finance in CommSec’s latest ‘State of the States’ report

The number of home loans is growing faster in Australian Capital Territory and Victoria than anywhere else in the nation, according to CommSec’s State of the States report.

The number of home loans grew 36% on the decade average in the ACT, and was up by 25.8% in Victoria. Both beat New South Wales, were housing finance grew 18.3% on the decade average. 

CommSec’s State of the States report looks at various economic indicators to rank Australia’s states and territories; housing finance is only part of the equation. Overall NSW holds the top spot, with its numbers on retail spending, business investment, unemployment and dwelling starts leaving other states behind. 

When it comes to population growth, however, Victoria, the ACT and Queensland are growing faster than NSW. 

What decline?

The narrative around Australia’s housing market has generally separated Sydney and Melbourne as booming and the rest of the nation as stagnant.

CommSec’s statistics disprove this notion: in six of Australia’s states and territory, home loan numbers are above their decade average. In addition to the ACT, Victoria and NSW, Tasmania, Queensland and South Australia are also seeing a growth in housing finance.

Furthermore, in all these markets except Queensland and South Australia, the trend number of loans are above year-ago levels.

Only in Western Australia and the Northern Territory has the number of home loans declined below the decade average, by 16.5% in WA and 20.9% in the NT.

Broker numbers vs. state economies 

Broker numbers rarely follow the shifting economies of different states; WA was an early adopter of brokers even before the housing boom, for example. 

Yet CommSec’s numbers, combined with recent figures from the MFAA, suggest that brokers run risks by ignoring changing state economies. Broker numbers are growing faster than the number of loans in NSW and ACT, Queensland, WA and SA, according to the MFAA’s Industry Intelligence Report.

In WA, where the number of new loans settled by 10.5% between October 2016 – March 2017, broker numbers continued to rise, by 1.2%.

With brokers’ market share at 55.7%, however, there remains room for growth for brokerages.