New lending to housing investors fell 10.2 per cent in the June quarter to $37.1 billion, against a 1.9 per cent fall in owner-occupier lending, figures the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Friday show.
Total new housing loan commitments were $97.6 billion for the quarter, down 5.2 per cent on the March quarter and up 6.8 per cent on the same quarter last year. The number of commitments fell 5.4 per cent to 134,225, which is where the two halves of the market separate: the value of lending is still above last year, the number of loans written is not. Commitments were up 0.1 per cent over the year.
Investors wrote 52,599 of those loans, down 8.6 per cent for the quarter. Owner-occupiers wrote 81,626, down 3.3 per cent for the quarter and down 1.6 per cent on a year ago. Owner-occupier lending by value was $60.5 billion.
The average new owner-occupier loan was $731,000 nationally. The average new investor loan was $708,000.
First home buyers borrowed $18.4 billion, up 0.2 per cent for the quarter and up 10 per cent on a year earlier. The number of first home buyers taking an owner-occupier loan was 29,319, down 2.9 per cent for the quarter and unchanged over the year. The same number of first home buyers borrowed a tenth more money than they did twelve months ago.
Business borrowing moved the other way. New lending for the purchase of property by businesses was $27.2 billion, up 4.4 per cent for the quarter and up 18.9 per cent over the year, the strongest annual growth in the release. Business lending for construction was $12.5 billion, up 2.9 per cent for the quarter and down 0.2 per cent over the year.
That pairing is the part of the release worth reading twice. Borrowing to buy existing property rose 18.9 per cent over the year. Borrowing to build fell. Whatever is drawing capital into Australian property at the moment, it is not the part of the market that adds a dwelling to the supply.
New personal fixed-term loan commitments were $9.7 billion, down 0.9 per cent for the quarter and up 7.1 per cent over the year.
The retreat by investors is quarterly, not structural. Investor lending is still 8.1 per cent higher than it was in the June quarter of 2025, and investors still wrote $37.1 billion of the $97.6 billion in new housing credit. A single quarter of falling commitments does not reverse a year of growth, and these are loans approved before the Reserve Bank's August meeting.
The September quarter release will be the first to capture borrowing decided after that meeting. Until then, the number that has not moved is the first home buyer count, which the ABS records as unchanged from a year earlier.
