Western Australia has retained the highest home loan delinquency rate in the country for the third straight year despite an improvement in 2017, with some of Perth’s northern suburbs among the worst performing in Australia, according to ratings agency Moody’s.
In November 2017, the state’s delinquency rate (being the proportion of residential mortgages that were more than 30 days in arrears) was 2.5 per cent – down from a record high in 2016 of 2.76 per cent.
WA also led the country in 2015, with a rate of 1.71 per cent.
“In WA, the 30-plus delinquency rate fell 0.26 percentage points over the year to November 2017,” the ratings agency said.
“However, at 2.5 per cent, the mortgage delinquency rate in WA remains the highest in the country.”
Ballajura, Baskerville and Clarkson were among the top five worst performing suburbs in Australia, while WA’s outback and Wheatbelt were the two worst performing regions in the nation.
Scarborough, Como and Joondanna were the state’s top-performing suburbs.
Moody’s said that regions with exposure to the resource and mining sectors dominated the list of areas with the highest delinquencies.
“The WA economy has benefitted from healthy export volumes for key commodities in 2017,” the agency said.
“However, excluding exports, WA's final demand fell by 1.8 per cent over the year to December 2017 because of declines in business investment.
“We expect WA's economy to remain soft over the three years to 2021.”
Moody’s said house prices in Perth had continued to decline, although the rate of decline hade slowed, while underemployment was above the national average.
Nationally, the delinquency rate decreased 0.07 per cent to 1.45 per cent, with delinquencies declining in all states except NSW.
