Last week, the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) released data on housing transfers and mortgage lodgements.
Like the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment statistics analysed last week, which showed ongoing deleveraging, the DERM data is current to May 2012, so it leads the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Housing Finance data by one month.
First, below is a chart plotting housing transfers against mortgage lodgements on a 3-month moving average (3MMA) basis:
According to DERM, both the number of transfers and mortgage lodgements are 20% and 16% respectively above the lows of early 2011, but remain very weak relative to the past decade.
The below charts plot both series against the average number of transfers/mortgage lodgements over the life of the series. First, the transfers data:
According to DERM, housing transfer volumes in May remained -27% below average levels.
And below is the mortgage lodgments chart:
Mortgage lodgements were -28% below average levels, according to DERM.
Finally, the below chart shows the same transfers and mortgage lodgements data on a rolling annual basis:
Clearly, Queensland transfers and mortgage lodgements are rebounding from their lows of 2011, but remain highly subdued relative to the past decade.
Based on the DERM data, Queensland home values are likely to remain soft, but should hold-up far better than they did in 2011, where they (Brisbane) fell -6.8% over the year according to RP Data.
