Western Australia has been identified by lenders as a hotspot for rising mortgage arrears and defaults, in the wake of the end of the mining boom. But new research shows that affordability has improved in the state and stress levels are down.Curtin University's Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre interviewed 4000 people for its latest Housing Affordability Report and found that things are looking up for homebuyers in WA. The study looked at two measures of affordability: share of income going to housing costs and the ratio of house price to income.On the first measure, the proportion of WA homeowners who pay 30 per cent or more of their incomes in housing costs fell from 38 per cent in 2011/12 to 35 per cent in 2013/14.Perth homeowners with mortgages commit a median 27 per cent of their income to housing costs, down by 0.7 percentage points in two years and down by around three percentage points since 2009.If there is a problem it is in regional WA, where housing costs for homeowners rank second highest of all regional areas of Australia, with housing costs at a median of 34 per cent of income.Looking at the ratio of price to income, for houses in Perth that multiple fell from 6.6 times in 2013 to 6.1 times last year, indicating an improvement in affordability. For units in Perth the multiple fell from 5.4 times to 4.9 times over the same period and for houses in regional WA the multiple fell from 5.5 times to five times. The proportion of WA homeowners in different degrees of housing stress have fallen since 2011/12, at a greater rate than Australia overall. The proportion of households with mortgages that are in the bottom two income quintiles and who pay more than 30 per cent in housing costs (a standard stress measure according to the report) has fallen from 13 per cent in 2011/12 to around eight per cent today. This is a bigger change than the national rate of decline in stress levels over the same period.