The January 2024 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices (SLOOS) addressed changes in the standards and terms on, and demand for, bank loans to businesses and households over the past three months, which generally correspond to the fourth quarter of 2023.
Regarding loans to businesses, survey respondents, on balance, reported tighter standards and weaker demand for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans to firms of all sizes over the fourth quarter. Furthermore, banks reported tighter standards and weaker demand for all commercial real estate (CRE) loan categories.
For loans to households, banks, on balance, reported that lending standards tightened across all categories of residential real estate (RRE) loans other than government residential mortgages and government-sponsored enterprise (GSE)-eligible residential mortgages, for which standards remained basically unchanged. Meanwhile, demand weakened for all RRE loan categories. In addition, banks reported tighter standards and weaker demand for home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). Moreover, for credit card, auto, and other consumer loans, standards reportedly tightened, and demand weakened on balance.While banks, on balance, reported having tightened lending standards further for most loan categories in the fourth quarter, lower net shares of banks reported tightening lending standards than in the third quarter across all loan categories.
The January SLOOS also included a set of special questions inquiring about banks’ expectations for changes in lending standards, borrower demand, and loan performance over 2024. Banks, on balance, reported expecting lending standards to remain basically unchanged for C&I and RRE loans, but to tighten further for CRE, credit card, and auto loans. In addition, banks reported expecting loan demand to strengthen across all loan categories, and loan quality to deteriorate across most loan types.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.
This graph on Residential Real Estate demand is from the Senior Loan Officer Survey Charts.
The upper graphs are for standards and shows standards have tightened.