A couple of measures chosen by APRA to curtail selected forms of housing lending by banks are having their intended effect, or looking as if they may, with the level of new lending by all banks more restrained over the March 2017 quarter.New residential loans approved for households over the quarter by banks with loans of more than A$1 billion were $89.3 billion, around five per cent less than the quarterly lending average over calendar 2016, APRA said in its quarterly report on property exposures.New investment loans, the focus of APRA's activism for a couple of years, were $31 billion, only one billion less than the quarterly average over the prior year. Overall, investor loans increased by 5.8 per cent from March 2016, compared with APRA's target of no greater than ten per cent growth. On a flow basis, investor loans increased by 4.8 per cent compared with a year before.Interest-only loans approved over the quarter were $32 billion, around $2.5 billion less than the quarterly average over the prior year. The most public form of APRA's concerns over interest-only loans and its edicts to the industry to cut back this share of mortgage funding date only from March 31.The APRA flow data shows interest-only loans were around 33 per cent of loan approvals over the March 2017 quarter, down a little from 34 per cent one year go, but down a lot in comparison with the 46 per cent share of this form of lending in mid 2015.Wayne Byres, APRA's chair, reiterated at a Senate hearing last night the language of the regulator's concerns over "the heightened risk in housing lending. "This reflects the environment of high prices and household debt, low interest rates and income growth, and strong competitive pressures. Our actions - including our most recent intervention to limit the extent of interest-only lending - have been designed to reinforce sound lending standards in authorised deposit-taking institutions," Byres said.APRA added a caveat to its data this quarter to explain that "the data used to monitor ADIs' new interest-only lending is not the same as the source data for the statistics in this publication. "First, APRA monitors ADIs' new interest-only lending using data on loans funded; statistics in this publication show loans approved. 'Loans approved' is a broader definition than 'loans funded'; loans approved may not necessarily be funded. "Second, APRA monitors new interest-only loans funded by all ADIs; interest-only mortgage statistics in this publication are based on data reported by 31 ADIs with over $1 billion in residential term loans."