Auckland's residential building industry appears to be stabilising with more than 1300 new homes completed in August

There was a jump in the number of new homes completed in Auckland in August, with Auckland Council issuing Code Compliance Certificates (CCCs) for 1320 new dwellings.

That was the seventh highest number of CCCs issued for new dwellings in the Auckland region in any month of the year since current records began in January 2013.

It was also up by a third compared to the 990 CCCs issued for new dwellings in the region in August 2019 before the Covid pandemic disrupted the building industry (see graph below).

CCCs are issued when a building is completed and are therefore the most accurate measure of new housing supply, unlike building consents which are usually issued before building work commences.

However on an annual basis, 13,021 new dwellings were completed in the 12 months to the end of August, down 8.2% compared to the 12 months to the end of August last year.

So far the figures suggest that the number of new homes being built in Auckland has dropped back by between 8% and 11% from last year's peak and seems to be relatively stable at around that level.

But so far there has not been the substantial downturn in post-pandemic building completions that some had been expecting, although signs of stress in the industry are showing up in the length of time it is taking for projects to be completed.

Up until the middle of this year, the length of time between a new dwelling receiving its building consent and it being signed off with a Code Compliance Certificate was less than two years for between 85% and 89% of projects.

But by August this year that figure had slipped back to 75%, as more projects took longer than two years to complete.

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