Even before the big banks jacked up their lending rates, growth in credit for housing - now within a whisker of $1.5 trillion - was already slowing.
The total of housing credit outstanding rose by 0.6 per cent in September, figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia on Friday showed.
That was a touch slower than August's rise of 0.7 per cent rise the month before, the biggest monthly increase in five years.
The figures showed moves to discourage lending to investors were having an effect, as investor loans grew by 0.5 per cent, their slowest pace for over two years.
That was largely offset by faster growth in home-buyer loans, which ticked up to 0.7 per cent, its fastest monthly pace since 2009.
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The RBA said that some borrowers had changed the stated purpose of their existing loan after interest rate differentials between home-buyer and investor loans were introduced, but the growth rates have been adjusted to allow for that effect.
Since December last year, the financial regulator, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, has been putting pressure on the banks to restrict growth in lending to investors to 10 per cent a year to avoid imbalances and instability in the financial system.
Growth in investor housing loans was 10.4 per cent over the year to September, but the pace slowed to 9.7 per cent - expressed as an annualised rate - between March and September, the first time six-monthly growth in investor housing credit moved to the right side of the regulator's line in the sand since early 2014.
Home-buyer lending rose only 5.8 per cent over the past year, with annual growth in total housing credit steady on 7.5 per cent.
That annual growth rate represents a rise of $106 billion in total housing credit, which reached $1.495 trillion by the end of September and very likely topped $1.5 trillion during October.
