The Queensland Government has recently changed the way that it reports housing transfers and mortgages, now providing users with more granular data on a fortnightly basis (rather than monthly, as was the case previously).
According to the State Government, the number of housing transfers and mortgage lodgements continues to increase, rising by 11% and 4% respectively in the year to October 2013, although they remain 20% and 25% respectively below the 13-year average (see next chart).
For the first time, the Queensland Government has also begun providing data on mortgage discharges (i.e. mortgages repaid in full) on a fortnightly basis. While the data only goes back to mid-2008, and is inherently volatile, it does suggest that Queenslanders are deleveraging, at least with respect to the number of mortgages taken out, with mortgage discharges outnumbering the number of mortgage lodgements (see below charts).
In fact, in the year to 2 November 2013, 9,000 mortgages were lost in Queensland:
This phenomenon, which has also been prevalent in Victoria, helps to explain why aggregate mortgage credit growth has been so low, despite the big lift in housing finance commitments – i.e. the higher rate of repayments are offsetting the increase in new finance commitments.
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