Peak consents?

Residential building consents rose in 2014 but still not back to their 2007 levels; Auckland the main drag but Waikato also struggles to maintain momentum

Property

Residential building consents rose in 2014 but still not back to their 2007 levels; Auckland the main drag but Waikato also struggles to maintain momentum

30th Jan 15, 11:28am by David Chaston

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Image sourced from Shutterstock.com</a>

The growth in residential building consents issued in 2014 slowed noticeably.

A total of 24,680 new dwellings were consented in 2014 which was up +16% from 2013, Statistics New Zealand said today. (3,284 of these were apartments, up +36% from 2013.)

However the 2012 to 2013 growth was +26%.

The regions driving the increases in both years were Auckland and Canterbury.

The regions that consented the most new dwellings in 2014 were:

Auckland – 7,595 (up +20% percent from 2013)
Canterbury – 7,308 (up +27%)
Waikato – 2,369 (up +5.5%).

The total value of building work consented in 2014 was $14.6 bln (up 21% from 2013). This consisted of:

$9.5 billion of residential work (up +20% from 2013)
$5.1 billion of non-residential work (up +21%).

The new non-residential floor space consented in 2014 could cover 377 rugby fields said Statistics NZ.

A feature of todays data is the under-weighting of the Auckland numbers.

In 2013 consent levels grew by 1,728 residences over the previous year. But in 2014 the growth was only 1,285.

Another region that is struggling to maintain building consent levels is the Waikato. The +5.5% rise in 2014 comes after a +24% rise the previous year.

Nationally, an extra 3,390 consents were issued to achieve the 24,680 level. That is slower growth than the 4,361 extra consents that were issued in 2013.

See the charts below for the full month by month regional breakdown of the number of consents issued:

Building consents - residential

Select chart tabs

Source: Statistics NZ

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1 Comments

by Kumbel | 30th Jan 15, 1:51pm 1422579105

Uh-oh (use your Scooby-Doo voice)

Auckland needed well over 1087 to have any hope of hitting the Special Housing Accord Year 2 targets.

At a mere 630 consents issued in Auckland a worse housing disaster looms.

Both the median and average consenting rate for Auckland for calendar year 2014 was in the low 600's so this was just a business as usual result with no real sign of a pickup in building rates.

BTW 850 consents issued was plausible given that there are two stat holidays in December and three days (29th - 31st) that don't count as working days for the purpose of tracking consent processing performance. But 630? Not even close to an excuse.