The first home owners grant and lower interest rates are combining to stimulate demand for new loans, and banks rather than other lenders continue to be the beneficiaries of this flow of new business.Monthly data on new housing finance commitments for owner occupation shows a rise in demand for the third month in a row, following nine consecutive months of decline.  New commitments increased by 7.1 per cent overall in December 2008, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Commitments increased by 7.5 per cent for banks and by 1.5 per cent for all non-bank lenders.The group of lenders that the ABS classes as wholesale lenders and that once had been labelled as dependent on securitisation reported a rise in demand in December, following 10 months of mostly large declines.