First home buyers and upgraders have been dominating the market for quite some time now, the quiet pickup in investor activity is going largely unnoticed. The most recent statistics for home lending data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found in October 2020, there was $5.3 billion in new lending to investors. While this represented the smallest share of total new lending to investors (23.3%), the value of lending to investors has increased for five consecutive months and is up by 29.5% over that period.
The volume of email enquiries from investors to agents for established properties on realestate.com.au was 1.1% higher in October 2020 than it was in October 2019.
Top 10 regions* with the most email investor enquires (October 2020, *Regions are defined by the ABS’ SA4 standards)
- Gold Coast
- Sunshine Coast
- Central Coast
- Melbourne – Inner
- Melbourne – West
- Melbourne – South East
- Richmond – Tweed
- Hunter Valley exc Newcastle
- Brisbane Inner City
- Sydney – City and Inner South
Gold Coast was the most popular region for investors in both 2019 and 2020, however, the volume of enquiry has fallen by 5.5% over the past year. While the Sunshine Coast has seen the second-highest volume of enquiry from investors this year with the volume up 10.5% on a year ago.
