Housing Prices: Housing Finance

housing prices: Buyers wait for bargains as Australia's housing market hits long slide Read more The latest housing finance figures from the ABS confirm the findings of private firms that housing prices have been falling for some time now, according to The Guardian. In July, the value of housing finance was 8.3% below what it was 12 months previous the biggest annual fall since the The biggest reason for the fall has been the drop in investor housing loans a fall that is largely policy driven as the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and RBA sought to reduce banks' exposure to risk. It has left the nation very much in debt, and while the Reserve Bank is mostly not worried, should our economy's run without a recession come to an end, we will enter an economic downturn with households and the economy more susceptible to collapsing house prices than ever before. While the value of owner-occupier housing finance is just 1.2% below its most recent peak, investor housing finance is 22% below its recent peak of December 2016 and 28% below its record level of April 2015 Given the link between the growth of housing finance and house prices, we can expect house prices, which according to some measures have been falling for nearly a year, to continue to weaken for some time yet As ever, however, the picture is not uniform. Western Australia, on the other hand, has been going backwards now for more than three-and-a-half years You might think that we would see a fall in the average size of a home loan. The total value of owner-occupier home loans has fallen in New South Wales and is slowing in Victoria, while there has been a slight pick-up in South Australia and Queensland. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.