High-risk investment and owner-occupied loans have decreased in 2026 Q1

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has released its Quarterly ADI Property Exposure Statistics report for 2026 Q1 (March). Agile Market Intelligence has analysed and plotted the publicly available data and calculated the growth rates. The value of new housing loans have dropped between 2025 Q4 and 2026 Q1, while a decrease of high-risk loans in the first quarter of 2026 has also occurred. 

Key stats you need to know

• The value of new housing loans in Q1 2026 total $182,113 million.
  
  
• LVR for owner-occupied housing loans dropped down to 30%, down 2 percentage points from the previous quarter.
  
  
• Nearly 1 in 3 invest housing loans have a LVR exceeding 80%, thereby considered risky. 

New housing loans dropped to $182,000 million in 2026 Q1

• The total new housing loans for the first quarter of 2026 are valued at $182,113 million.
  
  
• 62% of the total loans are owner-occupied, while investment loans comprise 35%. 

The value of total new housing loans dropped to $182,113 million from a $217,592 million high last 2025 Q4. This showed a 16% decrease by the time 2026 Q1 rolled by. The majority of the value originated from owner-occupied loans, while over a third is attributable to investment loans (35%). The percentage of investment loans also shrank between the two quarters by 1 percentage point, whereas owner-occupied loans have remained steady at 62%.

High-risk housing loans decreased for the first quarter of 2026

Loan-to-value ratio (LVR) compares the amount of the mortgage in comparison to the asset to be purchased. Loans with an LVR below 80% are generally considered lower risk, while those above 80% carry higher lending risk. The first quarter of 2026 has seen a slight decrease in risky loans for both owner-occupied housing and investment housing, compared to the previous quarter. From 32% of loans exceeding 80% in the December 2025 quarter, the percentage of this segment for owner-occupied housing loans dropped down 2 percentage points. Similarly, the percentage of risky loans for investment housing dipped by 1 percentage point in the March 2026 quarter.

“The decrease in new risky loans is indicative of the anticipation of the price hikes in 2026, which had indeed occurred with the increase of the cash rate and inflation at the beginning of the year,” said Michael Johnson, Director at Agile Market Intelligence.

“Both consumers and lenders were wary of the potential changes in the new year back then, and the numbers reflect their retreat back into safe territory.”

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About the research

Statistics in this article were drawn by Agile Market Intelligence from APRA’s quarterly ADI property exposure statistics (March 2026). The dataset covers property loans across authorised deposit-taking institutions, particularly loan-to-value statistics for owner-occupied and investment housing loans. Agile has plotted the loans per DTI together with the going average interest rate to show the proportion of high-risk loans.

Agile Market Intelligence also conducts Broker Pulse, a monthly survey of residential and commercial mortgage lenders. It is a community-driven knowledge base of lender performance that offers transparency to the market by surfacing these collective insights from the broker community. This empowers brokers to make informed decisions and enables lenders to benchmark and improve performance.

Participating brokers receive access to a bird’s-eye view of the lender benchmarking data each month. To sign up or for more information visit www.brokerpulse.com.au.

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