Housing finance weak, but…

ABS housing Finance is out for October and is ugly:

OCTOBER KEY FIGURES

	Trend estimates		Seasonally adjusted estimates
	Oct 2011	Sep 2011 to Oct 2011	Oct 2011	Sep 2011 to Oct 2011
Value of dwelling commitments(a)(b)	$m	% change	$m	% change
Total dwellings	20 812	0.0	20 458	-2.5
Owner occupied housing	14 514	0.0	14 377	-1.2
Investment housing – fixed loans(c)	6 298	0.0	6 081	-5.5
Number of dwelling commitments(a)(b)	no.	% change	no.	% change
Owner occupied housing	51 831	0.7	51 981	0.7
Construction of dwellings	4 706	-0.5	4 646	-1.7
Purchase of new dwellings	2 219	0.4	2 210	0.1
Purchase of established dwellings	44 906	0.9	45 125	0.9

Here’s my first chart. Note especially the light blue line. Ex-refinancing, established housing finance is going nowhere (except down slowly):

By state, it’s a one man show:

By purpose, there’s nothing much going on either:

Some small upside can be found in a minor stirring amongst first home buyers with a jump from 16.4% to 17.9% of overall orignations:

But the average total loan size remains stalled:

In sum, this is a quite weak report. If not for the AFG data suggesting a big bounce in November following the rate cut, I’d be getting quite concerned. In that vein, the AFG report for October did forecast this weakness so that’s some confirmation about the indexes worth. As DE has said several times, we’re still waiting for confirmation of the AFG breakout in other indicators. Next month’s mortgage finance will be more important than this month.