NOVEMBER KEY FIGURES

	Trend estimates		Seasonally adjusted estimates
	Nov 2014	Oct 2014 to Nov 2014	Nov 2014	Oct 2014 to Nov 2014
Value of dwelling commitments(a)(b)
	$m	% change	$m	% change
Total dwellings	29 225	0.6	29 003	-1.0
Owner occupied housing	17 248	0.5	17 282	-0.2
Investment housing - fixed loans(c)	11 978	0.9	11 721	-2.2
Number of dwelling commitments(a)(b)
	no.	% change	no.	% change
Owner occupied housing	52 253	0.0	52 079	-0.7
Construction of dwellings	6 291	0.2	6 213	-2.6
Purchase of new dwellings	2 840	-0.5	2 812	1.3
Purchase of established dwellings	43 123	0.0	43 054	-0.5
(a) Includes refinancing (see Glossary).
(b) Excludes alterations and additions.
(c) Excludes revolving credit.

Value of dwelling commitments, Total dwellings

No. of dwelling commitments, Owner occupied housing

NOVEMBER KEY POINTS


VALUE OF DWELLING COMMITMENTS

November 2014 compared with October 2014:

• The trend estimate for the total value of dwelling finance commitments excluding alterations and additions rose 0.6%. Investment housing commitments rose 0.9% and owner occupied housing commitments rose 0.5%.
• In seasonally adjusted terms, the total value of dwelling finance commitments excluding alterations and additions fell 1.0%.

NUMBER OF DWELLING COMMITMENTS

November 2014 compared with October 2014:

• In trend terms, the number of commitments for owner occupied housing finance was flat in November 2014.
• In trend terms, the number of commitments for the purchase of established dwellings was flat and the number of commitments for the construction of dwellings rose 0.2%, while the number of commitments for the purchase of new dwellings fell 0.5%.
• In original terms, the number of first home buyer commitments as a percentage of total owner occupied housing finance commitments rose to 11.6% in November 2014 from 11.4% in October 2014.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
December 2014	11 February 2015
January 2015	11 March 2015
February 2015	10 April 2015
March 2015	12 May 2015
April 2015	9 June 2015
May 2015	10 July 2015

REVISIONS

In this issue revisions have been made to the original series as a result of improved reporting of survey and administrative data. These revisions have impacted on:

• Owner-occupied housing for periods September 2014 and October 2014
• Investment housing for periods September 2014 and October 2014
• Housing loan outstandings to households; owner-occupied housing: Credit Co-operatives for October 2014 month.

Seasonally adjusted and trend series have been revised as a result of the incorporation of estimates for the latest month and the revision of seasonal factors due to the concurrent seasonal adjustment methodology.


FIRST HOME BUYERS

An investigation to evaluate the robustness of estimates of loans to first home buyers found that some lenders experience difficulty reporting on loans where the buyer does not receive a first home owner grant. Users are advised to exercise caution in using this data. Loans to first home buyers are published in Table 9a (Australia) and Table 9b (State) on the downloads tab of this release, and in Table 9 in the PDF.

Most data on first home buyers are derived from the ARF 392.0 Housing Finance form collected by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) under the Financial Sector (Collection of Data) Act 2001.

ABS and APRA will continue to work with lenders to improve data quality. In the meantime, from the December 2014 issue (to be released on 11 February 2015), estimates of loans to first home buyers will include an adjustment for under-reporting of loans where the buyer did not receive a first home owner grant. An Information Paper will be released on the ABS website on 4 February 2015 explaining changes to the method of estimating first home buyers' data and the extent of revisions.

The ABS will continue to update the method as lenders progressively improve their reporting.


PRIVACY

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INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.