Despite a soft housing market in the throes of resuscitation, Aussie has reported exceptional business growth with home loan lodgements and settlements, plus customer lead generation for October, all tracking well over 20 per cent on the previous year. These results are a reflection of the very successful “it’s smart to ask” marketing campaign as well as more customer care initiatives and increased productivity  by Aussie’s 750 brokers.

In October, lodgements were up 27 per cent and settlements   up 27 per cent on October 2011, indicating that there is strong business growth through  interest and enquiries from  home buyers and refinancers.

 “We have not seen enormous sales results like this since March 2009, when we acquired Wizard, so these results are exceptional, considering the soft market conditions and given they don’t include any acquisitions or other anomalies,” says John Symond, Chairman and founder of Aussie.

“Our first quarter has also been pleasing with profit above budget as our sales team continues to deliver record settlements, supported by strong results from our Aussie home loan and non-mortgage product range.”

All states recorded strong settlement growth vs prior year, with stellar performances from WA and Queensland recording massive 53 per cent and 42 per cent increases respectively.

Aussie’s lead generation marketing program delivered the highest number of leads since 2006, up 35 per cent on last year, demonstrating continued customer support for the Aussie brand and mortgage broking overall.

“Despite widespread pessimism about the state of the housing market, it appears that house prices have bottomed and there is a slight improvement in consumers’ confidence,” continues Symond.

The October results build on a successful first quarter for Aussie which has recorded an overall settlement increase of 19 per cent over last year. On the back of the ongoing success, Aussie continues to seek and recruit quality brokers for its business.