The estimated quarterly value of new building project starts dropped to a three year low in the first quarter (Q1) this year.
Statistics NZ's quarterly Building Activity Survey found $7.569 billion of new building projects, including residential and non-residential work, were commenced in Q1.
That was down by 10.2% compared to Q1 last year, and was the fifth consecutive quarter in which the value of new building work has declined, and the lowest since Q1 2022.
It is also $1.809b lower than the peak of $9.378b commenced in Q3 2023.
Of the $7.569b of new project starts in Q1 this year, $4.778b (63.1%) was for residential building work and $2.792 (36.9%) for non-residential projects including commercial buildings such as shops, offices, factories and hotels, plus public buildings such as schools and hospitals.
Residential building work has been hit particularly hard, with the value of projects commenced declining for seven consecutive quarters and falling to their lowest point in any quarter since Q1 2021.
There were also big declines in the value of commencements for projects involving storage buildings such as warehouses.
The value of that work has steadily declined for seven consecutive quarters, when compared to the previous quarters of the same year, with the quarterly declines 20% or more for the last four quarters.
On an annual basis, $1.444b of storage building starts were recorded in the 12 months to March this year, down 22.0% compared to the previous 12 months.
Also showing big declines were new starts for educational buildings, which dropped form $2.090b in the 12 months to March last year to $1.640b (-21.5%) in the 12 months to March this year.
2 Comments
Minor building work, timber fence, not being quoted on about two months ago. Tells me building type work is still pick and choose by a particular well established medium sized building services contractor in NP.
As I've said before all that has happened say for residential house construction in NP is instead of 12-18month its probably dropped to 9-12months.
Good news for property owners. The last thing they need is a robust building sector delivering new houses.
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