Sales of new homes and apartments have risen in November, said the Housing Industry Association (HIA) said in its latest report released on Friday.
HIA’s new homes sales report which consists a survey of Australia’s largest home builders – shows a high bounce in November with sales of newly detached homes increasing by 5.2 percent, while sales of multi-units were up by 9.3 percent.
The November update showed a 6.1 percent bounce in seasonally-adjusted new home sales.
Over the three months to November 2016, the total number of new home sales fell by 0.7 percent to be down by only 0.2 percent when compared to the same three-month period in 2015.
“Following a dip to a two-year low last October, the November bounce in new home sales is a reminder that the national new home construction sector remains in strong shape,” HIA chief economist, Dr Harley Dale said.
“The sector may have just passed its peak, but the short-term outlook is a healthy one, a conclusion supported by other leading indicators such as the ABS measures of Building Approvals and Housing Finance.”
However, new home sales for NSW contracted by 5.9 percent but grew by 17.9 percent in Queensland, 4.7 percent in Victoria, 4.2 percent in Western Australia, and 4.0 percent in South Australia.
“At this stage of the new home building cycle that’s a very impressive result – this is already the largest and longest national new home construction cycle in history.”
“A healthy outlook for new home construction in the first half of 2017 is good news for the Australian economy, because of the huge impact that new home construction has on broader economic activity. Without the boost from housing over the last five years the domestic economy would have at some point slipped into recession.”
“You wouldn’t want to be seeing signals of an imminent and sharp slowdown in national new home building activity, and we’re not. Looking further out, the declines in construction activity will inevitably become chunkier,” Dale said.
