Queensland investor home loans fall 10.1 per cent in the June quarter

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Investors took out 10.1 per cent fewer home loans in Queensland in the June quarter than in the March quarter, according to the Lending Indicators release published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on 14 August 2026. Across Australia the number of new investor loans fell 8.6 per cent, which the ABS describes as the largest quarterly fall since the September quarter of 2022.

The release covers April, May and June, the three months in which the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate for the third time this year and the Federal Budget announced changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. It is the first quarter of official lending data to include the weeks after that Budget, and Queensland, which had been among the busiest investor markets in the country, moved with the larger states rather than against them.

ABS Lending Indicators, June quarter 2026, released 14 August 2026. Loan numbers are seasonally adjusted; average loan sizes are original series. The national share is computed from 52,599 investor loans out of 134,225.

What the ABS counted in Queensland

The headline for the state is the fall in the number of new investor loan commitments: down 10.1 per cent in a single quarter. That is a steeper drop than the national 8.6 per cent, though smaller than the falls the ABS reports for New South Wales, at 15.5 per cent, and Victoria, at 14.2 per cent. The three largest states together account for the national result. The smaller jurisdictions went the other way: investor loan numbers rose 12.8 per cent in the Northern Territory, 8.7 per cent in the Australian Capital Territory and 5.3 per cent in Tasmania.

The size of the loans did not fall with their number. The ABS puts the average new investor loan in Queensland at $713,000 in June, against $711,000 in March, a rise of $2,000. The average owner-occupier loan in the state reached $751,000, up $10,000 from $741,000 three months earlier. The comparison site Canstar, in its reading of the same release, noted that Queensland was one of four jurisdictions, with South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, where average loan sizes set new records in the quarter, while they declined in New South Wales and Victoria.

Put together, the two figures describe a market with fewer investor buyers, each still borrowing about as much as before. An average is not a price, and a rising average loan can reflect a change in who is still buying as much as a change in what homes cost. With fewer loans written, the investors who remained in the Queensland market in the June quarter were, on average, those borrowing slightly more.

The national picture behind the state figure

Nationally, the ABS counted 134,225 new loan commitments for dwellings in the June quarter, down 5.4 per cent, with a combined value of $97.6 billion, down 5.2 per cent or $5.4 billion. Every type of borrower took out fewer loans, but not to the same degree.

Investors accounted for 4,966 of the loans that disappeared between the two quarters and owner-occupiers for 2,745, of which 891 were first home buyers. In dollars the gap is wider still. The value of investor lending fell 10.2 per cent to $37.1 billion, while owner-occupier lending fell 1.9 per cent to $60.5 billion. Canstar calculates the investor fall at $4.2 billion, most of the $5.4 billion total.

The annual comparison shows how quickly the mood changed. In the March quarter the number of investor loans was 19.4 per cent higher than a year before. By June that annual growth had shrunk to 2.8 per cent. The value of all new home lending was 6.8 per cent higher than a year earlier, against 19.1 per cent in March. Dr Mish Tan, the ABS head of finance statistics, summed it up in the release: "Lending fell across all borrower types this quarter and returned to similar levels to this time last year."

First home buyers were the steadiest group. Their loan numbers fell 2.9 per cent in the quarter and were level with a year earlier, and the value of their borrowing edged up 0.2 per cent to $18.4 billion, 10.0 per cent more than in the June quarter of 2025.

Two changes landed in the same three months

The ABS names two events in its commentary. The first is monetary policy: the Reserve Bank increased the cash rate for the third time in 2026 during the quarter. Each rise reduces the amount a lender will advance against a given income, and it does so for an investor twice, once through the repayments on the new loan and once through the repayments on any loans already held.

The second is tax. The Federal Budget of 12 May 2026 announced that, from 1 July 2027, losses on residential investment properties will be deductible against other income only where the dwelling is newly built, and that the 50 per cent capital gains discount will give way to indexation of the cost base and a minimum tax on gains. According to an analysis by the law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth published on 28 May, when the first bill went to Parliament, the cut-off sits at Budget day itself: rental losses on dwellings acquired after 12 May 2026 are to be set aside and used only against later residential rental income or capital gains.

The statistics cannot say how much of the fall belongs to each cause, and the ABS does not try. What can be said is that the June quarter contains about seven weeks of post-Budget lending and that the group whose tax position changed is the group whose borrowing fell most.

How lenders changed their sums

Part of the mechanism runs through bank credit policy rather than investor sentiment. When a lender assesses an investment loan, it has usually counted the tax saved through negative gearing as a small addition to the borrower's income. After the Budget, several lenders stopped doing so for established homes.

The trade publication Australian Broker reported on 1 June that Commonwealth Bank had, from 29 May, limited the recognition of negative gearing benefits to construction loans, purchases of newly built property and refinancing of property already owned at Budget time, and that ANZ had taken a similar line for contracts signed after 12 May. The same report listed NAB, Macquarie Bank, Great Southern Bank and Suncorp as having moved earlier. It also carried a projection from Westpac that the tax changes could reduce new investor activity by up to 34 per cent in the near term. That was a bank's estimate rather than a measured outcome, and the first measured outcome, in this release, is a national fall of 8.6 per cent in one quarter.

A second constraint was already in place. Since 1 February 2026 the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has limited banks to writing no more than 20 per cent of their new mortgages to borrowers whose total debt is six times their income or more, as reported by Australian Broker in March. Investors with several properties are the borrowers most likely to sit above that multiple.

What it means for Queensland owners and buyers

For an investor who already owns property in Queensland, nothing in the release changes the terms of an existing loan or the tax treatment of a dwelling held before the Budget. The figures matter more as a reading of who will be on the other side of a future sale. Investors made up 39.2 per cent of all new home loans written in Australia in the June quarter, 52,599 out of 134,225, so a fall of a tenth in their numbers in Queensland removes a meaningful slice of the buyers for the units and lower-priced houses they tend to favour.

For owner-occupiers and first home buyers, the effect runs the other way: less competition from investors at inspections and auctions in the price brackets where the two groups overlap. The national figures show first home buyers holding their ground while investors retreated, although the ABS release does not break that down for Queensland in its summary.

For tenants the question is slower to answer. An investor loan that is not written is, in most cases, a rental home that is not added, but lending data cannot show whether the dwelling was bought by an owner-occupier instead, or not built at all. The release is a count of borrowers, and the rental consequences will show up in other series.

Why one quarter is not a trend

Three cautions apply before reading a direction into the numbers. The first is the base. The March quarter was unusually strong for investors, with annual growth of 19.4 per cent, so part of the June fall is a return from a high point; investor loan numbers were still 2.8 per cent above their level of a year earlier.

The second is timing. Buyers who expected a tax change may have brought purchases forward into the weeks before Budget night, and buyers of established homes had no reason to wait afterwards. A quarter that mixes both effects is hard to read on its own.

The third is the composition of what investors buy. The tax changes treat new dwellings differently from established ones, and the lenders that changed their serviceability rules kept the old treatment for construction and new builds. Whether Queensland investors shift toward new housing, rather than simply buy less, is a question the next releases will be better placed to answer.

The next figures are due in November

The ABS has scheduled the September quarter release of Lending Indicators for 11 November 2026. It will be the first to cover three full months after the Budget, and the first in which the Queensland figure can be compared with a quarter that already includes the change.

Before then, the definition that decides which homes keep the existing tax treatment is still being settled. Treasury released draft legislation on 4 August setting out what counts as a new dwelling, with comments due by 21 August. The main changes themselves do not start until 1 July 2027, which leaves most of a year in which lending decisions will be made under rules that are announced but not yet in force.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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