18.8% Investor Lending Surge — The Market Isn’t Cooling

Investor lending in Australia just jumped 18.8% in 12 months, while owner occupier lending rose just 2.5%. That’s the real story behind the headlines: the market isn’t cooling — the professionals are quietly coming back. • Investor lending up 18.8% year-on-year • Owner occupier lending up 2.5% year-on-year • Total lending up 8.6% over 12 months • New home loan commitments down 6.2% quarter-on-quarter • Owner occupier loans down 6.9% quarter-on-quarter • Investors now account for 57,000 of roughly 140,000 new loans — about four in every 10 • Housing inflation is up 6.5%, while trimmed mean inflation rose from 3.4% to 3.6% • Australia’s population grew by 412,500 in the year to December, with net overseas migration adding 301,000 • First home buyer loan value fell 6.7% in the quarter, even as loan volumes rose 5% over the year What this means: the national market is being driven by different forces than the headlines suggest. Investor demand is responding to tight vacancy, record rents, and supply constraints — which is exactly why the best opportunities are local, not national. Download our no-cost Top Five Markets Report 2026 → https://ripe.house/five-comeback Subscribe for more data-led Australian property analysis from Ripehouse Advisory. 0:00 Investor lending surges 18.8% 0:35 Why the quarterly headline misleads 1:20 Housing inflation and sticky costs 2:10 Population growth and rental demand 3:05 Why first home buyers are being squeezed 4:05 Smart money vs trap? 5:10 How Ripehouse Advisory finds the strongest markets 6:10 The real takeaway for investors #AustralianProperty #PropertyInvesting #BuyersAgent #InvestorLending #PropertyMarketAustralia #RipehouseAdvisory This video is general information only and not financial or investment advice. Consider your own circumstances and seek professional advice.

Investor lending in Australia just jumped 18.8% in a year. Owner occupiers up 2.5. Read that again. The people who buy property for a living are coming back nearly seven and a half times faster than everyone buying a home to live in. And here's the part that should stop you cold. This landed in the exact same government. Release the headlines used to tell you the market is cooling. It is not cooling. The smart money is quietly stampeding back in. And by the end of this video, I'll show you why and exactly where our data says it's heading. Let me show you the sleight of hand because it's a good one. Two days ago, the Australian Bureau of Statistics dropped its lending figures and the headline everyone ran was true. Quarter on quarter, new home loans fell. Total commitments down 6.2%. Owner occupier loans down 6.9. It looks like the buyers are leaving the room, but that's one quarter, a single 90-day snapshot. Zoom out to the 12-month number, the one that actually shows the trend and the story flips completely. Watch what happens. Over the full year, total lending is up 8.6%. Owner occupiers and the mums and dads buying a home up just 2.5. But investors up 18.8%. Nearly 19% more borrowed dollars flowing into investment property in 12 months. Investors now make up 57,000 of the roughly 140,000 new loans. That's four in every 10 loans written in this country. The crowd is hesitating. The professionals are accelerating. So the real question isn't whether the market's cooling, it's this, what do the investors know that the headlines don't? Here's the first thing they know, and it's hiding in a different government report. Everyone celebrated that headline, inflation just fell to 4%. Good news, right? Look underneath it. The single biggest driver of inflation in the country is housing, up 6.5%. The number one contributor, bigger than food, bigger than transport. And the core measure the Reserve Bank actually watches, the trimmed mean, didn't fall at all. It rose from 3.4 to 3.6%. Translation, the cost of a roof is the sticky engine of inflation, and it is not slowing down. Investors don't fight that trend, they buy it. Because that's what a professional investor does. They don't buy the mood, they buy the mechanism. And the mechanism right now is brutal in one direction. Rents are at record highs. We covered that, vacancy is under 1%. Housing costs are the number one thing pushing inflation up. When the price of the thing you own is the very force driving the whole economy's cost of living, you don't sell it, you accumulate it. Owner occupiers buy with their heart and their borrowing capacity. Investors buy with a spreadsheet, and right now the spreadsheet is screaming. But there's a second thing they know, and it's the flaw under this entire market. Demand. In the year to December, Australia's population grew by 412,500 people. Net overseas migration alone added 301,000. Now migration is easing, it's down from last year, and I'll be honest about that. But even the slower pace is adding a city the size of Canberra to the country every single year. Every one of those people needs somewhere to live in a market where fewer than one rental in a hundred is available, and new supply is being legislated away. That's not a demand cliff, that's a demand flaw. The investors can see it. Now let me show you where I fit into this, because this is what I do for a living. This is my trade, ripe house scores, demand minus supply across all 15,286 suburbs in A