There's some good news for the beleaguered construction industry in the latest building consent figures, with the value of new office building consents hitting a record high.
The total value of building consents issued for new office buildings consented in the third quarter (Q3) of this year was $433 million. That's the highest amount in any quarter since Statistics NZ began collating the data in its current format in 1990.
That is the estimated value of the building work involved and does not include the cost of the land.
The previous record for the value of new office buildings was $394 million in Q2 2022.
Most of the building work relates to 16 projects in the Auckland Region, between them accounting for 89%, $384m, of the estimated value of new office buildings consented nationally in Q3.
New office building consents were modest in the other main urban regions in Q3, with just $3.45m consented in Waikato, $0.95m in Bay of Plenty, $2.7m in the Wellington Region, the lowest amount since Q1 2019, plus $1.59m in Canterbury and $0.95m in Otago.
New factories and industrial buildings also got a boost in Q3, with 93,855 square metres of new space consented, the most in any quarter over the last 12 months.
However, there was a drop off in consents for new warehouse/storage buildings in Q3, which until now have been one of the stars of the commercial construction sector with demand for more warehouses and distribution centres driven by trends such as the increasing popularity of online shopping.
Just 124,397 square metres of new warehouse/storage space was consented throughout the country in Q3 this year, the lowest amount of new space consented for these types of buildings since Q3 2019.
However, the quarterly figures can be volatile, so there needs to be another set of quarterly figures to determine if the latest decline was a one-off or the start of a trend.
There was also just over 43,000 square metres of new retail space consented around the country in Q3, around the quarterly average over the last two years.
Interest.co.nz's Building Consent Analysis Tables, track the number and value of consents issued for office, retail, warehouse and factory buildings, nationally and in each of the main urban regions.
They also contain information on the average size, average value and average build cost per square metre, for each of the building types.
You can access the tables here, and then click on the links to the specific type of commercial building that's of interest.
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