Lending Indicators, housing finance, quarterly

The Lending Indicators of the Australian Bureau of Statistics for housing finance: the number and the value of new loan commitments for housing, one row per series and quarter from the September quarter 2002 (several breakdowns from the September quarter 2019). A commitment is a loan offer that the borrower has accepted; lenders report it to the ABS through APRA, and the ABS says the lenders above its reporting thresholds cover about 95% of lending. The value measure is in millions of Australian dollars. Series are for Australia and each state and territory, in original, seasonally adjusted and trend terms, by purpose of the loan (dwellings in total, construction of dwellings, purchase of newly erected or existing dwellings, residential land, alterations, additions and repairs, and refinancing), by owner occupiers, investors and first home buyers, and, for dwellings in Australia, by type of lender (major banks, other authorised deposit-taking institutions and non-ADIs). Rows of different levels overlap, so do not add them up across levels: the parts add up to a total only in the original series from the September quarter 2019 (and then not where the ABS withholds a small state), because the ABS adjusts each seasonally adjusted and trend series on its own and models its figures before July 2019, when a new collection began, which it says to use with caution. The ABS also warns of data quality concerns in how lenders report the value of internal refinancing, and expects revisions to the housing finance data when they are resolved. A value the ABS does not publish (some lender types and small states) is empty, with the ABS's reason in obs_status. The Data API is an ABS beta service whose data can trail the ABS website.