88.1% of property sales settled on 1st date: PEXA

According to PEXA’s On Time Settle Report March 2023 quarter, Australian lenders nationally successfully settled 88.1 per cent of property sales on the first date via the PEXA Exchange.

The report stated this result was unchanged on the December 2022 quarter result, however, it was an improvement compared to the same period last year, revealing a rise of 2.4 per cent.

PEXA’s approach to measure the on-time settlement performance of lenders utilises a metric called Settled First Date (SFD). The SFD measures the percentage of total sale settlements of each participant group on the scheduled day via the PEXA Exchange.

The SFD analysis included a total volume of 137,188 settlements for the March 2023 quarter.

According to the metric, lenders in Queensland posted a “record high” average SFD of 91 per cent, followed by Victoria at 89 per cent, while ACT lenders trailed other states with an average SFD result of 85 per cent in the March quarter.

Lenders in NSW posted an average SFD of 86.7 per cent, followed by Western Australian lenders at 86.1 per cent and South Australian lenders at 85.1 per cent.

The report found that foreign ADIs performed the strongest of all the segments and have held the top spot for three quarters in a row, posting an average SFD of 91.6 per cent, which was followed by customer-owned banks at 91.2 per cent.

These two lender categories held a leading position in most states, while making up 8.9 per cent of all total settlements during the quarter.

The “other domestic banks” segment posted an average SFD of 90.2 per cent, showing the most improvement, with an increase of 1.4 per cent to average SFD when compared to the previous quarter, according to the report.

Furthermore, the major banks performed “slightly above” the national average, with 89.2 per cent of properties settled on the first date, while the major bank subsidiaries recorded a lower average of 86.8 per cent. According to the report, these two segments attributed to 65.3 per cent of total settlements analysed during the March quarter.

Non-ADIs came back with the lowest recorded result of 80 per cent of properties settled on the first date, which revealed a decline from the December 2022 quarter of 0.6 per cent.

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Written by Adrian Suljanovic

Last Updated: 26 May 2023

Published: 29 May 2023