This article is general information only and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional for advice specific to your situation.
Key takeaways
- The ABS Lending Indicators for the March quarter 2026 (released 13 May) recorded the first quarterly fall in new investor loan commitments this cycle: down 5.3% in number, down 3.0% in value. Annual growth is still up 18.8% in number, so the turn is recent, not a collapse.
- Macquarie Bank's FY26 results (released 9 May) confirmed a $181.3 billion home loan book, up 28% year-on-year. Macquarie now holds about 7.1% of the Australian mortgage market and writes more than 95% of new loans through brokers.
- CBA's Q3 FY26 trading update (13 May) showed home loan balances growing at 1.0 times system. ANZ, NAB and Westpac each lost share over their most recent reporting period. The Big 4 in aggregate are no longer growing faster than the rest of the market.
- NSW set a new annual investor lending record at 62,501 loans. Investors are now 44% of all new home loans written in NSW, up from 37% at the end of 2022. Victoria's annual investor lending growth (13%) is now the fastest of the major states.
- Refinance cashback offers are live from ME Bank ($3,000), Reduce Home Loans (up to $10,000), Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank ($2,500 to $3,000). Most close in late August. Brokers are processing 18.7% more refinance submissions than a year ago, with Victoria and Tasmania up more than 28%.
- For landlords, the Q1 ABS print plus Macquarie's market share grab equals a real pricing window. Asking your existing lender for a discretionary discount or moving to a non-major is genuinely cheaper this month than it was in February.
This article is general information only and does not constitute financial, tax, or investment advice.
The big property data drops of the last two weeks have come in a particular order. PropTrack called the first national price fall of 2026 at the start of May. The RBA hiked to 4.35% on May 5. Macquarie Group reported a record full-year result on 9 May. The ABS Lending Indicators for the March quarter landed on 13 May. CBA's third-quarter trading update printed the same day.
Take all of that as one picture and the read is clear. The investor credit pulse turned in Q1, before the May rate hike landed. Macquarie is taking share from the Big 4 at a pace that has not been seen in a decade. And the refinance war that opens any time a market wobbles is open right now. For landlords with a variable loan, that is a five-day pricing window that closes when the Friday pass-through washes through everyone's expectations.
The Q1 Print: Investor Loans Cooled For The First Time This Cycle
The ABS Lending Indicators release on 13 May recorded a 5.3% fall in the number of new investor loan commitments for dwellings in the March quarter 2026, with the value down 3.0%. Total new loan commitments fell 6.2% in number and 3.8% in value across all borrower types, with owner-occupier loans down 6.9% in number and first home buyer commitments down 4.3%.
The annual comparison is still strong. Investor loans are up 18.8% in number and 25.3% in value compared with the March quarter 2025, and total new home loans are 8.6% higher than a year ago, per the ABS media release. But the quarterly turn is the news. It is the first time investor lending has fallen on the quarter since the current cycle started building in 2024. The fall happened with the cash rate at 4.10% for most of the period and before any of the May 5 hike, the May 12 federal budget, or the APRA debt-to-income cap that came in on 1 February 2026 had a chance to bind on Q1 numbers.
The state breakdown matters for landlords sizing up where to buy or hold. NSW investors wrote 62,501 loans over the year, an annual record, with investor share now at 44% of new home loans in NSW, up from 37% at the end of 2022. Victoria's investor lending rose 13% on the year to 47,732 loans, accelerating from 9% growth a year earlier. Queensland investor volumes passed 48,000 for the first time since June 2022 but annual growth of 8% now lags NSW and Victoria. Investor share of total Victorian lending sits at 36%.
The takeaway: investor activity is broad-based across the east coast, but the slowdown showed up in the macro number before it showed up in any single state print. Q2 numbers (due around mid-August) will carry the first full read on the May hike and the budget grandfathering line of 12 May 2026.
Macquarie's $181 Billion Book And The Broker Channel
Macquarie Group reported full-year FY26 net profit after tax of $4.847 billion on 9 May, up 30% on FY25, with the second-half number ($3.192 billion) the largest half-year profit in the group's history. The banking and financial services division carried a lot of the lift. The home loan book hit $181.3 billion at 31 March 2026, up 28% year-on-year, per Macquarie's own results release. Total deposits in the same division were $221.5 billion, up 25%.
The structural story is that Macquarie wrote that growth almost entirely through the broker channel. Broker News reports that brokers originated more than 95% of new home loans at Macquarie in the year. The bank's average LVR at origination sits at 65%, and the dynamic LVR (current value to current loan balance) across the book is 51%. That is a well-secured book of borrowers with real equity, which is exactly the customer profile non-majors will fight the Big 4 hardest to win.
Macquarie's share of the Australian mortgage market is now around 7.1%, up from 0.2% in 2010 and 7.0% as recently as the end of 2025. The market is roughly $2.55 trillion in housing loan balances, so each 1% of share is roughly $25 billion of book. Macquarie picked up about half a per cent of share over FY26 alone. None of the Big 4 has grown faster than 7% on home loans over the same period.
The Big 4 Are Holding Margin, Not Volume
CBA reported its Q3 FY26 trading update on 13 May, the same day as the ABS print. Cash net profit after tax came in at about $2.7 billion, up 4% on the prior comparative quarter. CBA management flagged that underlying net interest margin was broadly stable when excluding non-recurring tailwinds. Crucially, home loan balances grew $41 billion over the 12 months to March 2026 at 1.0 times system growth. One times system means CBA is holding share, not gaining it.
The other three majors are running below system. ANZ, NAB and Westpac each lost mortgage share over their most recent reporting half, with Macquarie growing roughly 3.7 times faster than the market on home loans. The Big 4 in aggregate still control over 70% of the mortgage market, but the trend has been one-way for two years.
Two things matter for an investor reading that. First, the Big 4 are choosing margin over volume right now. When a major bank protects margin in a softening market it does so by leaving the discount lever on the table for the customers who ask for it. That is most often the customers who threaten to leave. Second, the broker channel is the price discovery mechanism. Brokers wrote more than three of every four new home loans nationally in the most recent quarter, and refinance submissions through brokers are up 18.7% year-on-year in Q1 2026, with Victoria and Tasmania each up more than 28%.
The Refinance Cashback Window Is Live
The pricing tells you the war is on. ME Bank opened a $3,000 cashback for investor refinancers on loans from $700,000 at LVR up to 80% on 1 May 2026, with applications open until 28 August, per ME Bank's offer page. Reduce Home Loans is running tiered cashback from $2,000 on loans over $250,000 up to $10,000 on loans over $2 million at LVR up to 90%, with funding required by 31 August 2026, per Canstar's offer roundup. Newcastle Permanent is offering $2,500 to $3,000 depending on loan size at 80% LVR or below. Greater Bank is matching at the same band.
Cashback offers are not free money. They typically come with break costs on a fixed loan, with a clawback if the loan is closed inside 24 months, and with a rate that may be 5 to 15 basis points above the lender's sharpest non-cashback variable. The maths only works if the new rate is at or below your current rate, the cashback covers actual switching costs (typically $700 to $1,200 for an investor refinance), and you intend to hold the loan past the clawback window. For investors with $750,000 or more of investment lending sitting at a 6.90% Big 4 variable, the gap to the best non-major investor variables is currently around 15 to 30 basis points. On $750,000 that is $1,125 to $2,250 a year before tax, plus the cashback on day one.
What This Means For A Property Investor This Week
The five things to do with this picture:
- Get your current rate in writing. Call your existing lender's retention team and ask for the discretionary discount today. The reference question is "what is the sharpest rate you can offer me on this loan at my current LVR if I stay?" In a softening volume environment the answer is meaningfully better than it was six months ago. Document the number.
- Get one non-major quote. Macquarie, ING, Bankwest, ME, Athena and at least one mutual will let you get a quote without a full application. Compare to your retention number. If the gap is 15bp or more on the variable, plus a cashback that covers switching costs, the maths is in your favour.
- Stay variable if you are still in the rate cycle. The May SoMP's technical assumption is 4.70% by year-end, with the Big 4 split on whether May 5 was the peak. Locking a fixed rate at the top of the cycle has a poor risk-reward when fixed pricing already implies the same path. The exception is if your cash flow cannot absorb another 50bp of variable rate.
- Watch your DTI. APRA's debt-to-income cap binds banks at 6.0 or higher across new lending. Investors with three or more leveraged properties may find their preferred lender has already used its monthly cap quota by the third week of the month. The fix is either staging the refinance early in the month or shifting to a lender with capacity. A broker will know which is which on the day.
- Use the budget grandfathering line. Any established property owned on 12 May 2026 keeps current negative gearing treatment under the budget transition rules. A refinance on an existing loan does not change the grandfathering status of the underlying property. Refinancing is a pure pricing decision, not a tax-treatment decision.
The single biggest mistake an investor can make in the next 90 days is to assume their existing rate is the market rate. The Q1 ABS print and Macquarie's results together say it is not. The bank that has your loan today is the bank that has the least to gain from telling you that.
Track The Numbers In One Place
Propkt gives landlords a single ledger for rent, expenses and loan interest across each property. The mortgage calculator runs the variable rate scenarios from this article against your actual loan balance, and the expense tracking feeds straight into a tax-ready end-of-year summary. If you are about to refinance, building the new repayment into your cash flow model before you sign saves the "wait, what is my actual position?" question at the next BAS or annual return.
The next major release on the calendar is the ABS April 2026 Labour Force print on Thursday 21 May. That is the next pivot point for whether the RBA's SoMP path to 4.70% holds or breaks.