New building approvals for February has hit a six-month high the Housing Industry Association (HIA) said in a statement on Monday.
HIA senior economist Shane Garrett said new dwelling approvals for February reached its highest level since August of last year, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
In seasonally-adjusted terms, total new dwelling approvals increased by 8.3 percent in February, this result involved a 5.7 percent rise in detached house approvals whereby ‘multi-unit’ approvals jumped by some 11 percent in the month.
“Over the past 12 months, new dwelling approvals have totalled 229,091 across Australia. This will ensure that a substantial pipeline of work will keep the housing industry busy for much of 2017,” Garrett said.
“Even though we saw a sharp bounce in new dwelling approvals during February, the overall building approvals profile is consistent with our expectation that new home construction will revert to lower levels over the next few years. The HIA new home sales series provides similar support for this outlook.”
“The multi-unit side of the market will see the greater share of the reduction in new home building activity. Already, approvals are down by over 20 per cent in quarterly terms since August of last year,” Garrett added.
During the month of February, total seasonally-adjusted new home building approvals only increased in two states: Queensland (+33.7 percent) and New South Wales (+19.6 percent).
While the largest reduction occurred in Tasmania (-14.7 percent), followed by Victoria (-8.8 percent) while approvals fell back in South Australia by -2.5 percent and Western Australia -5.5 percent.
In trend terms, approvals contracted by 13 percent in the Northern Territory with a decline of 15.7 percent occurring in the Australian Capital Territory.
