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New dwelling consents down in March, still woefully short of what is needed in Auckland

Property
New dwelling consents down in March, still woefully short of what is needed in Auckland

The number of new dwelling consents issued dropped slightly last month, with consents for 2315 new dwellings issued in March compared with 2379 in February, according to Statistics NZ.

Consents were flat in Auckland, where 788 new dwelling consents were issued in March compared with 787 in February and 756 in March last year.

That is still woefully short of the estimated 1200 new homes that need to be built in Auckland each month just to keep pace with the region's explosive migration-driven population growth.

That means Auckland's housing shortage is continuing to worsen with demand for homes continuing to outstrip supply by at least 400 homes a month, which is likely to maintain upward pressure on house prices and rents.

Within the Auckland region the number of dwellings consented in March dropped sharply in the central suburbs, from 179 in February to just 14 in March.

That probably reflects the fact that very few apartments were consented in March, with just 32 apartments consented in the whole country in March compared with 204 in February.

However there was substantial consenting activity in Rodney (100 dwellings), Albany (178 dwellings), Manurewa-Papakura (93 dwellings) and Franklin (92 dwellings) during the month.

In Hamilton just 78 new homes were consented in March, the lowest number since June last year and in Tauranga 110 new homes were consented, the lowest number since August last year.

In Wellington new dwelling consents remained at miserably low levels, with just 32 new homes consented in the region in March, the lowest number since April last year.

In the last 13 months the number of new homes consented in Wellington has exceeded 100 only once, back in November when 148 new homes were consented.

In Christchurch 311 new homes were consented compared with 264 in February and 341 in March last year.

Stand alone homes remain by far the most common type of dwelling being consented, with 1815 houses consented throughout the country in March, 32 apartments, 134 retirement village units and 334 townhouses, flats and home units.

The total value of new residential dwelling work consented in March was $857 million with another $164 million of structural additions and alterations to existing homes consented, taking the total value of residential consents issued in March to just over $1 billion, the same level it has been hovering around every month since November, except January.

On top of that $460 million of non-residential building work was consented in March, compared to $372 million in February and $427 million in March last year.

That included $99 million of office space, $67 million of educational buildings, $52 million of social and cultural buildings and $40 million of retail premises. 

See the interactive chart below for the number of new dwelling consents issued each region every month:

Building consents - residential

Select chart tabs

#issued Nationally
#issued in Northland
#issued in Auckland
#issued in the Waikato
#issued in the Bay of Plenty
#issued
#issued in Hawkes Bay
#issued
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#issued in Wellington
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# Nelson
#issued
# Westand
#issued in Canterbury
# Otago
# Southland

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21 Comments

Adds to the argument that we need a migration cap of around 50k per year until the supply side is sorted out.

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Around 20k per year would be better in my opinion.

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-50k imo

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Is that (minus) 50k or (plus) 50k?

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Wellington has a lot of processing problems and what seems like a backlog of consents to get through. They seem to be trying to clear the work but are struggling. The volume of commercial consents should be higher (but probably needs a lot more multi-storey residential).

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Is it possible everyone is waiting for the Unitary plan..???
Why build 2 houses now when the Unitary plan will allow for more per site..??

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Bingo

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The urinary plan will piss a few people off, but it's probably as close as we'll get to the trickle down effect.

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No.There's plenty of SHA's with limited activity. Developers struggle with two key problems : 1) finding large sites to do large scale housing developments and 2) it's very difficult to make the numbers stack up on small subdivisons with 2-3 houses. It's expensive to build houses in Auckland.

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Yep I think that is a big factor. I think there will be an 'explosion' once the unitary plan is through.
The govt will be wanting to see more from SHAs though. There are promising signs. A planner I know at the council told me there is something like 300 applications within SHA's either in council or coming before the September deadline that they will need to process over the coming 6-9 months.
We should see a big increase in consents numbers in about 3-4 months.

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Yep. Come to NZ. We have a huge surplus of houses!!

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thats becuase he knows we would make them citizens then they would fly straight to australia as " new Kiwis"

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Can someone explain to me why there is a massive shortage of homes in auckland but rents are rising very slowly?Surely if we were having a massive shortage of homes being built we would be seeing big rent increaes of the likes of Tauranga.

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you can only raise rents to the ability that people can pay, its expensive to live in auckland

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Seems like a long slog ahead still with an increasing backlog. Somewhere someone has lost site of the true fundamental issue at hand, you can look at as many markets, interest rates, borrowing ratios, OCR rates, forecasts, patterns and cycles as you like, when there is simply not enough supply and not a substitute for this then it will always go to the highest bidder and for some moving to NZ they will have the money to pay even if the locals don't! Cap the inflow or make it even more attractive than it is for new migrants to move outside of Auckland and address the rebuild!
I see plenty of land around the place....

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What's the lag time between consent and completion of build? Pieces of paper aren't livable (or affordable homes). How many new houses are actually being completed each month?

The SHA's don't have much effect if new properties are $800k plus. Advising FHB's to purchase $400k apartments and 1-2 bedroom units to get onto the property ladder is pretty dumb too really. When the entry level property doubles in price they can upgrade to a new build which has since doubled in price as well?

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What who need? We're renting in Auckland and have the pick of the bunch. There's no supply issue for us. Life is good in renter land. We're even considering asking for a rent reduction. This is the market responding to the real landscape.

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Which area do you live in? Whenever I rent out properly tenants tell me it's difficult to find nice, warm, dry non-leaky, non-mouldy, clean, safe, energy-efficient homes. I always get a lot of applications and have often been offered higher rent than my asking price to secure the property, which I don't accept.

If my tenants left tomorrow I'd increase the rent and easily get it. Anecdotes aren't that useful though. The facts speak for themselves. There's a housing shortage.

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Remuera. We couldn't afford to buy the house we rent, but we can afford the rent. If we moved tomorrow there's about half a dozen properties we could choose from that have been on trademe for almost a month.

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Same situation. Living in a great area in a warm comfortable house, rent is reasonable and has not changed for several years, great landlord and I am saving loads. Other than the long term concerns about not owning there are plenty of good things about renting at the moment. Am still cross about the rising house prices though :)

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We are doomed as a country for now and in the future. If land costs this much now then we are all going to have to live in apartment blocks. This is unacceptable and I pity anyone who doesn't own a house as you are doomed forever. Is this a country we want to be living in? The only thing that can fix this is 20% interest rates or another World War which will get the population down, unfortunately I dont foresee any of that, but then again neither did anyone foresee the credit crunch, 80s stockmarket crash, WW1, WW2, Dotcom bubble...

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