July dwelling consents almost unchanged from last year - down in Auckland

Property

The number of new dwelling consents was a mixed bag in July, with little growth in overall numbers

30th Aug 16, 11:32am by Greg Ninness

There were 2811 new homes consented in July, up slightly from the 2752, consented in June but almost unchanged form the 2824 consented in July last year, according to Statistics NZ (see chart below).

And the figures showed little to cheer about in the Auckland property market where a housing shortage continues to worsen, with 1087 dwelling consented in Auckland in July, up from 921 in June but well shy of the 1116 consented in July last year.

Within the Auckland region the largest number of consents issued was in the central isthmus suburbs (with the boundaries of the former Auckland City Council), where 353 new dwellings were consented, followed by 215 in Albany.

However very few new dwellings were consented in the cheaper areas on the outskirts of the city, with just 68 new dwellings consented Franklin, 79 in Manurewa/Papakura, and 71 in Rodney.

"In Auckland, total residential consents for the year reached 9622, less than one third of the national total despite the city accounting for at least half of the country's population growth over the last year," Westpac economist David Norman said in a First Impressions newsletter on the figures.

"A lot more growth in consents will be needed to begin eating into the housing shortfall of 30,000 dwellings."

Stand alone houses remain by far the most popular form of new housing. accounting for 1761 of the consents issued nationally in July, followed by 436 townhouses and flats, 425 apartments, and 189 retirement village units.

On an annual basis 29,084 new homes were consented in the 12 months ended July, up 13.2% compared to 25,696 in the 12 months ended July 2015.

The biggest monthly changes in the number of new consents issued occurred in Wellington, where they dropped from 275 in June to 126 in July, but that was still ahead of the 106 issued in July last year, and in Canterbury, where 543 new consents were issued in July compared with 467 in June and 650 in July last year.

The total value of new residential buildings consented in July was $895 million, up 8% compared to July last year, with another $138 million of residential alteration work consented, down 6.1% compared to July last year, pushing the total value of residential building work consented to $1.033 billion in July, up 5.9% compared to July last year.

On top of that another $614 million of non-residential building work was consented in July, up a whopping 35% compared to July last year.

The biggest non-residential sector for consents in July was educational buildings which received $187 million of new consents, followed by $134 million of office buildings $80 million of retail premises, $59 million of storage buildings and another $59 million of factories and industrial buildings.

Building consents - residential

Select chart tabs

Source: Statistics NZ

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15 Comments

by dictator | 30th Aug 16, 12:13pm 1472515984

Why would house consents go up by a significant amount? Local Councils are doing everything they can to abuse building consent processes to hold up every consent instead of actually process them. Most of the building officers carrying out the work are incapable of processing the consents that they are handed. If Council's were expected to perform their work competently and effectively instead of deliberately sabotaging every consent they are handed then there would be more construction going on.

by Ms de Meanour | 30th Aug 16, 12:18pm 1472516299

But there is precisely your problem. Many ratepayers absolutely do want their Councils to hold up (and preferably deny) building consents, as the Resource Management Act enables - arguably, requires - them to do. The Government has been trying to address that for years and you can thank Peter Dunne for the fact that they haven't been able to do it

by JoeDescartes | 30th Aug 16, 12:44pm 1472517889

That's just nonsense. The consent application process is dictated by central govt - local councils just follow the procedures and there is a clear set of criteria to complete. Research I've just done shows that 16% of consent applications are currently held by Auckland Council because the designer hasn't supplied sufficient information and Council reports there are problems with 70% of applications. They are under immense pressure to process applications - Council is very aware of the need to build more houses, so an automatic boot into bureaucrats masks the real problems, which is the building industry not doing their job well enough.

by notaneconomist | 30th Aug 16, 1:16pm 1472519775

That information doesn't stack up with me!!

Firstly the majority of homes being built are from housing companies, standard plan types.....So I am rather dubious that such high percentages of applications have problems........

The Council staff wouldn't know what immense pressure was....the staff do not have any of their own money on the line, they rock up to work, go home and get paid regardless of the outcome for the day, so don't go whinging on about how much pressure the staff are under as this is a nonsense!!

Bureaucracies are not needed but people on the inside of these bureaucracies keep writing reports to protect their privileged positions..........and the rest of the real world has to fund what is essentially a rort.

by dictator | 30th Aug 16, 1:21pm 1472520106

What you will find is that a large percentage of those held up because of the "designers" is actually because the building officers are incompetent, have not read the supplied information and in many cases refuse to communicate unless an official complaint is laid.

The Council's have multiplied their problems but blaming others does not improve the situation. Blaming the building industry for the failures of Council isn't appropriate but is typical of the unethical and corrupt behaviour you discover with local Councils.

You comment is complete nonsense because the Council is lying about their performance to cover their own arse. There are problems with 70% of applications because the majority of the problems are deliberately created by the Council.

by Donald Ellis | 30th Aug 16, 6:57pm 1472540226

Agreed, JoeDescartes. Further comment here .

Oh and I have been trying for years to dispel the nonsense spouted about councils. It's a vocation and a lifetime's work. But the results are not encouraging.

by Chris-M | 30th Aug 16, 12:46pm 1472517998

So as the demand increases in Auckland, the supply is diminishing. Nationals solutions are not working and the scale of this crisis increases by the day. ( I suspect prices of the houses being built are beyond a large number of peoples means, so there is a disconnect between supply and demand) The consequences are heading toward a major human and economic catastrophe. I shudder to think what the situation will be by the next election. It is far too late to avoid a major crash; the only question now is what we can do to mitigate the effects.

by rp | 30th Aug 16, 1:39pm 1472521191

True. You only have to read 'This time it's different' by Harvard economists to get a preview of the economic catostrophe coming and how it is all so predictable. The human tragedy will be worse

by bender | 30th Aug 16, 2:44pm 1472525051

Rogoff comments: " I’ve pushed the idea, for some time, that we’re in a Great
Contraction, not in a typical recession, and one has to analyze the problem differently.
Unfortunately, there is still a risk that this thing could get much, much worse. The biggest
problem is the global overhang of debt. After publishing our book, Carmen Reinhart and
I did a study that looked at the impact of public debt on growth. When debt gets over a
certain level—a good marker is 90 percent of GDP—it is linked to lower growth."

by dictator | 30th Aug 16, 4:03pm 1472529837

Our public debt to GDP is quite low at the moment. There's a real issue with the build up of private debt though.

edit: low compared to 50% debt to GDP, even though it's high for NZ.

by rp | 30th Aug 16, 1:26pm 1472520387

probably people holding up developments waiting for boom of unitary plan, cash in the land bank for multi unit dwellings

by 2 Tooth Bora | 30th Aug 16, 1:33pm 1472520795

Key and Smith both confirmed some time ago that if Council did not speed up and increase the volume of Consents significantly the Government would step in and do so .....
Nothing happening folks It's all B.S.

by Sluggy | 30th Aug 16, 3:53pm 1472529217

Its not like there are builders standing around with their fingers up their dates.
Apart from consents, there is not the capacity in the industry to do anymore, even if you tripled the speed of consents, there is no one to build them.
Ive said it two or three times on this site. The systemic failure is within the trades apprenticeship scheme. The ITO's are pushing as hard as they can but its to little to late, and we are busy importing chefs, cooks and students.
Stop foreigners buying our houses and land and the demand.. sorry I mean the supply will double. You heard it here first

by Donald Ellis | 30th Aug 16, 6:25pm 1472538318

No surprises in the number of dwellings consented in Auckland.

At 1,087 the total number of dwellings consented is actually up on last month and is the best month for a year.

Before anyone gets too excited. the number of houses being consented is still dropping so the numbers are:

houses: 452
apartments: 376
retirement units: 27
townhouses,flats: 232

My revised projection for Special Housing Accord Year 3 is up slightly to 9,886 giving a projected final total of dwellings consented over the three years of 26,010. In real life the number will be slightly lower as this month contained a very high number of consented apartments. Apartment consenting rates are highly variable and are likely to be much lower for the final two months of the Accord.

The SHA targeted 39,000 dwellings so pretty much bang on 66% success. The government will still claim total success as they wrote in an escape clause for themselves that lets them count all the sections that will one day be created in the Special Housing Areas that we now know are currently being indefinitely land-banked.

by kane02 | 31st Aug 16, 11:54am 1472601242

numbers will continue to fall. the banks have pulled back big time on funding large scale developments after the rbnz last effort. demand will continue to outstrip supply. prices will therefore head in one direction. UP UP and AWAY!!!