The number of building consents for new homes issued in January was down compared with a year earlier, with a decline in consents issued in Canterbury largely to blame.
According to Statistics NZ, consents were issued for 1695 new dwellings in January, compared to 1703 in January last year.
That was caused mainly by a slide in new consents in Christchurch, where just 153 consents were issued in January compared to 300 in January last year.
In Auckland consents were issued for 506 new homes in January compared to 482 in January last year.
There was also good growth in the number of consents being issued in Tauranga, where 145 new dwelling consents were issued in January, compared with 102 in January last year.
That means Tauranga is the third biggest centre for new housing construction in the country and almost pipped Christchurch at the number two spot last month.
In Hamilton, 102 new dwelling consents were issued January, unchanged form a year earlier.
In the year to January consents were issued for 27,124 new dwellings, which means they have more than doubled since the year to January 2012 when just 13,893 new dwelling consents were issued.
By housing type, 19,183 consents were for new stand alone houses, 2511 were for apartments, 1908 were for retirement units and 3522 were for townhouses, flats and home units.
The total value of residential building work consented was $10.635 billion in the year to January, made up of $8.906 billion of new dwellings and $1.728 billion of structural additions and alterations.
In addition another $5.876 billion of non-residential building work was consented in the year to January.
The biggest component of non-residnetial consents was $1.244 billion of offices and public transport buildings followed by $1.143 billion of educational buildings, $779 million of retail premises and $700 million of storage buildings such as warehouses.
See the interactive chart below for the number of new dwelling consents issued in each region every month since April 2000.
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