Australia: Bounce in housing finance - ANZ

David Plank, head of Australian economics at ANZ, notes that the Australia’s housing finance bounced in February, with all categories posting gains and all coming in above market expectations.

Key Quotes

“This continues the run of data over the past few weeks that has generally been above market expectations. For now the market seems to be attributing this to noise rather than evidence of a genuine turn. Our take is a little more positive, though it’s a little early to be definitive, and for housing finance it remains the case that the y/y decline is still very large.”

“The value of housing finance rose by 2.7% m/m in February, the first gain since July. Given the unrelenting weakness of the data since then, a bounce was perhaps inevitable at some point. Still, the gain was broad-based and larger than the market was looking for. The y/y decline slowed a touch, from -20.3% in January to -18.6% in February.”