Tasmania's worsening economic situation has again been highlighted with the release of home loan data for February.
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According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, new home loans fell a whopping 13.7 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms in Tasmania in February.
Nationally, home loans fell 5.6 per cent to 45,393 in February.
This follows a revised 6.3 per cent decline in January, the ABS says.
Home loans in NSW fell 10.1 per cent in February - that state's highest fall since February 1997.
Victorian loans fell 4.6 per cent, Queensland was down 0.5 per cent, Western Australia slid 2.1 per cent, South Australia was down 5 per cent, while the Northern Territory recorded the second-worst figures behind Tasmania with a fall of 11.4 per cent, and the ACT was down 4.5 per cent.
First home buyers were also down significantly - making up just 14.9 per cent of the market in February.
In January that figure was 15.2 per cent - in stark contrast to the heady says of 28.5 per cent in May 2009 when the federal government offered sizeable incentives to draw first-home buyers into the market.
The average loan size for first-home buyers rose $2700 to $277,000 in the month, while the average loan size for all home buyers dropped $2200 to $281,500 in the same period, the ABS said.
