The return of the investor?

Are we seeing a rebalancing of the Australian property market?

This growth period has primarily been driven by owner occupiers, but recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that maybe owner occupiers are pulling back while investors are starting to dip their toe in the market.

And owner-occupier lending pulled back by 1.8 per cent to $21.7 billion in February.

Investment lending increased to $6.9 billion in the month, though that remains a long way below the billions we saw a few years ago. 

These figures are echoed by the REA Group who have shown that (below), after a brief dip, enquiries on realestate.com.au from investors are steadily increasing. In March, investors accounted for 16.9 per cent of email enquiries, well above the 11 per cent share recorded during the trough in June 2020. In contrast, the share of email enquiries from those identifying as first-home buyers has been trending downwards since peaking in June 2020.