Mortgage Choice has attributed the improvement in the value of housing finance commitments in February to the "voracious appetite of first homebuyers for housing finance".
It adds further weight to calls for the government to extend the boosted FHOG or risk, what AFG called, a mortgage market "hangover".
Latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that the value of housing finance commitments for all dwellings increased by 1.3% in February, after an increase of 0.7% in January and 5.9% in December.
It is the fifth month of positive news about demand from the owner occupier market, with the total value of such loans rising 2.7% and the number of loans rising 0.4%.
Managing director of Mortgage Choice, Paul Lahiff said, "This improvement has no doubt been influenced heavily by the voracious appetite of first homebuyers for housing finance, which is due to a number of factors such as very low interest rates, Government grants and stimulus, relatively stable property prices, increasing rents and historically low rental vacancies".
"First homebuyers as a percentage of the total value of February's housing finance commitments was 26.9%, setting a record for the second month in a row as the highest proportion since the first homebuyer series commenced in 1991," Lahiff said.
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