SA experienced moderate house price growth in November‚ with prices up 4.8% year on year to R880‚475‚ the latest statistics from bond originator ooba show.
November also showed price growth of 3.0% on October’s figures.
ooba also reported a new high in approved home loans for November‚ exceeding its record set in the previous month.
The value of home loans approved through ooba in November was up 30% on November 2011‚ while October was up 47% on the prior year. For the 11-month period January to November‚ ooba’s approvals were up 147% over the same period in 2009‚ and up 42% on 2011.
This boosts ooba's performance for November to 313% higher than ooba’s historical lowest month during the property market crash and ensuing financial crisis‚ it said.
House prices for first-time buyers grew 4.3% year on year to R666‚317. The percentage of first-time buyers among ooba’s total applications decreased 0.8% year on year to 51.7%‚ ooba noted.
Ooba has also recorded an increase in buy-to-let applications‚ which in November accounted for almost 5% of the bond originator’s applications.
While this is nowhere near the peak buy-to-let application volumes of 14.3%‚ it is a jump on the previous month’s 3.8%‚ and could be influenced by the increasing rental yields recently reported by Tenant Profile Network Credit Bureau and investors’ improved perception of future property price growth.
The average home loan deposit was down year on year by 1.2% to 16.6% of the purchase price but increased 23.0% month on month from 13.5% of the purchase price in October. This is consistent with ooba’s experience of banks requiring higher deposits.
The average approved bond size increased 5.0% to R734‚180 in October this year from R698‚959 in October 2011.
The average initial decline ratio decreased 3.2% year on year to 46.0% in November and the percentage of applications that were declined by one bank but approved by another improved by 0.2% to 24.4%.
Ooba’s effective approval rate which is the overall percentage of loans approved once ooba has shopped around to all banks was 65.2% in November‚ 2.5% up on November 2011. Ooba’s trailing approval rate‚ which takes into account loans approved after month-end is currently 71.1%. - I-Net Bridge