A new report released by a building industry-Government partnership is giving projected house building figures for Auckland that fall well short of official Government and Auckland Council targets over the next three years.
The Building and Construction Sector Productivity Partnership is a partnership between industry and government established in November 2010 to address the issue of low productivity in the sector.
The Productivity Partnership has released a National Construction Pipeline report, which points to an "unprecedented level of building and construction in New Zealand" to the beginning of 2019.
The Partnership commissioned Pacifecon (NZ) Limited to produce the report with the support of BRANZ.
The report forecasts a 10% increase in construction activity every year for the next four years, peaking in 2016 when nearly $32 billion of construction activity is predicted. It brings together economic forecasts and data from the public and private sectors on their forward construction workload.
However, the specific detail around Auckland housing construction, contained in the report in graphic form on page 20 shows that in the next three calendar years around 31,000 homes are forecast to be built in Auckland, with about 11,500 of these in 2016.
Earlier this year the Government and the Auckland Council agreed the Auckland Housing Accord, which, in the targets section, point 26, says that in year one of the accord there will be 9000 dwelling and new sites consented, followed by 13,000 in year two and 17,000 in year three.
While that is "consented" rather than built dwellings, the accord also states that the Auckland Council had identified a shortfall of new dwellings of around 20,000 to 30,000 and a need for 13,000 each year.
The forecasts in the Partnership's report go as far as the first quarter of 2019 and don't at any point forecast as many as 13,000 houses in a year for Auckland.
Also, the report is forecasting a rapid increase in the proportion of "multi-unit" dwellings being built in Auckland, with the number of units actually outstripping the number of detached houses by 2018.
The report says that the forecasts of growth in building activity it has made "will be ambitious for the Auckland construction sector to reach and sustain".
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