Growing at 7.3% a year, a record outstanding balance.
4.6%▲
RBA cash rate, 16-year high
20032026
Highest setting since post-GFC peak in November 2010.
-A$34bn▼
Dwelling stock, first quarterly fall
2022 Q32026 Q2
First quarterly decline in total dwelling value since 2022.
Source: Reserve Bank of Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, ASX, OECD. Every figure is in the story below.
Australia's housing credit book reached A$2,568 billion as the RBA lifted rates to a 16-year high, while the dwelling stock backing those loans recorded its first quarterly fall since 2022.
The RBA's October 2026 Financial Stability Review judges that most households and banks are well placed to absorb softer conditions, meaning the divergence between credit growth and collateral values has not yet produced system-level stress.
Confidence has been below average for more than four years, yet households keep spending. With the cash rate at 4.60 per cent and debt at 178.4 per cent of income, that gap is closing.
Private wages are growing 0.5 percentage points slower than underlying inflation, ending a brief real-wage recovery, and the Reserve Bank has answered with its highest cash rate since 2010.
Trimmed mean inflation has climbed 90 basis points from its trough to 3.6 per cent, and the engine is a public sector paying more while productivity stalls.
Australian dwelling stock values fell A$34 billion in the June 2026 quarter while household credit rose A$45.8 billion in the same window, mechanically worsening the national ratio of debt to dwelling values.
Scheduled repayments took 9.4% of household disposable income in the March quarter of 2026, down from a 10.1% peak in mid-2024, though the RBA has raised rates four times in 2026.