There was a big jump in the number of residential building consents issued in September, indicating a possible turnaround in the residential construction sector.
According to Statistics NZ, 3747 new residential consents were issued throughout the country in September, which was up 21.7% compared to August and up 27.3% compared to September last year.
It was also the most new dwelling consents issued in any month of the year since November 2022.
The big jump in consent numbers was evident for most dwelling types, with consents for stand alone houses up 16.2% compared to September last year, while apartment consents were up a whopping 57.4%, and townhouses/home units were up 49.8%.
Retirement village units were the only types of housing to go against the trend, with consents for new retirement units down 61.4% in September compared to September last year.
New dwelling consent numbers were also up on an annual basis, with 34,882 new dwellings consented in the 12 months to September this year, up 3.6% compared to the previous 12 months.
That lifted the total estimated value of building work on new dwellings consented in September to $1.611 billion, up 22.1% compared to September last year.
There was also a huge jump in the value of non-residential building work consented, which was $947 million in September, up 47.0% compared to September last year.
That includes both new construction and alterations to non-residential buildings, which range from commercial buildings such as offices, shops, factories and warehouses to public service buildings such as hospitals and schools.
That took the total value of all types of building work consented in September to $2.829 billion, up 29.3% compared to September last year.
Building consents - residential
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11 Comments
What goes UP must come down ... wait a minute!
Can confirm a lot more optimism and demand from many sectors of construction. I'm hiring additional staff for the first time in 5 years, forward orders are solid, and the amount of new enquiry for projects is increasing.
Residential greenfields subdivision sector is still fairly meh though.
Good to hear a positive story on here.
Never many comments on the positive articles I’ve noticed. If this article said building activity is down there be 40 comments happy that the economy is crashing.
So you still believe we can build an economy on selling ever more expensive houses to each other?
Why would Jimbo's comment affirm that assumption?
As the concluding statement from the thread it would be a reasonable question to ask when an expansion of property credit is being promoted as positive....especially when it is such a belief that will support that credit demand.
And how many tradies have we lose...young ones to Oz, older ones just out of the game.
This'll sort itself out once the more easily replaceable jobs are obsoleted by AI.
Until then, good time to work with your hands, limited supply, steady demand.
I was walking to someone in construction last week who had been told by contacts in the timber industry that the big boys were ramping up production as they expected sales to take off next year.
Yay. back to we can build your house in 12 to 18 months time. Don't call us we'll' call you. Yeah right.
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