Lending indicators

Latest release

Quarterly estimates of new borrower-accepted finance commitments for housing, personal and business loans

Reference period
December Quarter 2024
Released
12/02/2025
  • Next Release 14/05/2025
    Lending indicators, March Quarter 2025
  • Next Release 13/08/2025
    Lending indicators, June Quarter 2025
  • Next Release 12/11/2025
    Lending indicators, September Quarter 2025
  • View all releases

Key statistics

In seasonally adjusted terms:

  • The total number of new loan commitments for dwellings fell 0.4% in the December quarter 2024 while the value rose 1.4%.
  • The number of new owner occupier loan commitments for dwellings rose 2.2% in the quarter while the value rose 4.2%.
  • The number of new investor loan commitments for dwellings fell 4.5% in the quarter while the value fell 2.9%.
  • The number of new owner occupier first home buyer loan commitments for dwellings rose 1.3% in the quarter while the value rose 1.5%.

Changes to this publication

This is the first quarterly Lending indicators release, with the publication having transitioned from a monthly release following the September 2024 reference period. 

Publication outputs have been changed to improve useability and interpretability. For more detail on this, see Changes to this publication.

Housing finance

Number of new loan commitments for dwellings (a), seasonally adjusted, Australia
 Dec Qtr 24
no.
Sep Qtr 24 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Dec Qtr 23 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Total loan commitments132,082-0.47.2
 Owner occupier 83,2062.24.0
  First home buyers29,7881.30.2
  Non-first home buyers53,0681.26.9
 Investor 48,876-4.513.2
  1. Dwelling commitments exclude refinancing.

    Loan commitments for dwellings includes loans for the purpose of ‘Construction of new dwellings’, ‘Purchase of new dwellings’ and ‘Purchase of existing dwellings’. 'Residential land' and 'Alterations and additions' are available as separate series.

Value of new loan commitments for dwellings (a), seasonally adjusted, Australia
 Dec Qtr 24
$b
Sep Qtr 24 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Dec Qtr 23 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Total loan commitments87.21.416.0
 Owner occupier54.84.212.7
  First home buyers16.01.55.5
  Non-first home buyers38.43.516.3
 Investor32.4-2.922.2
  1. Dwelling commitments exclude refinancing.

    Loan commitments for dwellings includes loans for the purpose of ‘Construction of new dwellings’, ‘Purchase of new dwellings’ and ‘Purchase of existing dwellings’. 'Residential land' and 'Alterations and additions' are available as separate series.

  1. All series exclude refinancing

    Some series only commenced collection in the September quarter 2019 with the introduction of the Economic and Financial Statistics collection.

    Loan commitments for dwellings includes loans for the purpose of ‘Construction of new dwellings’, ‘Purchase of new dwellings’ and ‘Purchase of existing dwellings’. 'Residential land' and 'Alterations and additions' are available as separate series.

  1. All series exclude refinancing

    Some series only commenced collection in the September quarter 2019 with the introduction of the Economic and Financial Statistics collection.

    Loan commitments for dwellings includes loans for the purpose of ‘Construction of new dwellings’, ‘Purchase of new dwellings’ and ‘Purchase of existing dwellings’. 'Residential land' and 'Alterations and additions' are available as separate series.

Please note that while the series graphed above are joined between the available data points, there may be missing data points in between which are not available for publication.

Please note that while the series graphed above are joined between the available data points, there may be missing data points in between which are not available for publication.

Series commenced collection in the September quarter 2019 with the introduction of the Economic and Financial Statistics collection.

Number of refinanced loan commitments, seasonally adjusted, Australia
 Dec Qtr 24
no.
Sep Qtr 24 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Dec Qtr 23 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Refinanced 
 Owner occupier 
  Internal46,16610.418.7
  External61,74912.01.5
 Investor 
  Internal18,2744.45.3
  External33,1677.411.8
Value of refinanced loan commitments, seasonally adjusted, Australia
 Dec Qtr 24
$b
Sep Qtr 24 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Dec Qtr 23 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Refinanced 
 Owner occupier 
  Internal25.515.429.7
  External36.912.210.8
 Investor 
  Internal12.07.720.0
  External21.39.123.3

Some series only commenced collection in the September quarter 2019 with the introduction of the Economic and Financial Statistics collection.

Some series only commenced collection in the September quarter 2019 with the introduction of the Economic and Financial Statistics collection.

Personal finance

Value of new loan commitments, personal fixed term (a), seasonally adjusted, Australia
  Dec Qtr 24
$b
Sep Qtr 24 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Dec Qtr 23 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Personal8.41.017.9
 Road vehicles4.71.513.0
 Other (b)3.92.125.9
  1. Loan commitments for personal fixed term loans exclude refinancing.
  2. Loan commitments for Personal 'Other' includes 'Personal investment', 'Travel and holidays', 'Other vehicles' and 'Household goods'.
  1. Any missing data points in the series above are not available for publication.

    Loan commitments for Personal 'Other' includes 'Personal investment', 'Travel and holidays', 'Other vehicles' and 'Household goods'.

Business finance

Value of new loan commitments, business, seasonally adjusted, Australia
  Dec Qtr 24
$b
Sep Qtr 24 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Dec Qtr 23 to Dec Qtr 24
% change
Business 
 Construction10.711.448.4
 Purchase of Property20.50.824.4

Any missing data points in the series above are not available for publication.

Changes to this publication

The transition from a monthly to a quarterly release has provided an opportunity to improve the useability and interpretability of the publication. Changes include:

  1. The introduction of seasonal adjustment for many series where there are now sufficient observations available (e.g. number of investor loans). Additional state and territory series have also been seasonally adjusted in cases where this improves the useability of the series. 
  2. The quality of seasonal adjustment has been improved by using direct adjustment for all series excluding the highest-level aggregate 'Total Dwellings' number and value series. Directly adjusted aggregates are not equal to the sum of their seasonally adjusted components. The superseded monthly Lending indicators used indirect seasonal adjustment for the 'Total Housing' and 'Owner Occupier Total Housing' value series. Indirectly adjusted aggregates are equal to the sum of their seasonally adjusted components.
  3. The headline publication concept has changed from new borrower accepted loan commitments for ‘Housing’ to new borrower accepted loan commitments for ‘Dwellings’ where ‘Dwellings’ include ‘Construction of new dwellings’, ‘Purchase of new dwellings’ and ‘Purchase of existing dwellings’. This differs to the previous monthly series headline concept of ‘Housing’ which included ‘Dwellings’ plus ‘Purchase of residential land’ and ‘Alterations and additions’. 'Residential land' and 'Alterations and additions' are available as separate series. 
  4. A new non-first home buyer series has been introduced. Previously, this could only be produced by manually subtracting number and value of first home buyer commitments from total owner occupier commitments. 
  5. The sub-purpose categories for personal fixed-term finance have been collapsed into ‘Purchase of road vehicles’ and ‘Other’ purposes. It can be difficult for lenders to accurately reflect the purpose of personal loans, particularly if they are unsecured. Because of this, reporting is not always consistent across lenders, resulting in a higher proportion of misclassifications. 
  6. The personal revolving credit series has been removed. This series was commonly misinterpreted as the amount of money being lent while the reporting concept for personal revolving credit was in fact “new and increased credit limits”.

The introduction of additional seasonally adjusted series has allowed for the focus of commentary in the 'Key statistics' to shift from value of loan commitments only, to both value and number of loan commitments. The number of new commitments provides a measure of activity while value measures a combination of activity and price. 

A detailed ‘Series ID concordance mapping’ has been provided under the Data Cube section below. 

Important quality notes

Seasonal adjustment methods

Treatment of Buy Now Pay Later products in personal finance

Housing finance data quality

Data downloads

Housing Finance - Total

Data files

Housing Finance - Owner-occupiers

Data files

Housing Finance - Investors

Data files

Housing Finance - Non First Home Buyers

Table 23. Households; Housing finance; Non First home buyers; Owner occupier; By state; New loan commitments; Numbers and values

Housing Finance - First home buyers

Data files

Housing Finance - Non-residents

Table 26. Households; Housing finance; Non-residents; New loan commitments; Numbers and values

Personal Finance

Table 27. Households; Personal finance; Fixed term loans; By purpose; New loan commitments; Values

Business Finance

Data files

Data cubes

Series ID concordance mapping

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 5601.0.

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