Disappointing after the last few months data being up on same period last year.
I’m sure they’re trying their best
[Residential construction volume has been declining for some time.](https://i.imgur.com/YdXk9Xt.png) Government had a brief PR win by hitting their targets at the end of last year, but that was driven by a lot of houses that had been stalled during COVID coming through at once.
The underlying activity in the sector does not make for good reading. Very low delivery of houses now for many years despite having the same number of construction workers as we had in 2004 when we built twice the number of homes.
Just to look into the first 2 months of this year vs last year, the total is 83 less, or a fall of 2%. So it is going in the wrong direction, but that is about 1 days worth of commencements. So hopefully it can turn around and start going the other way soon.
We’re not going to build fast enough to outpace immigration so it’s pointless even looking at building numbers.
You’ve got a space now where cost of material and cost of labour is increasing so the overall cost of construction is still growing but the actual selling price of the house is stagnating due to interest rates. Profit margin is getting tighter and tighter so a lot of developers are not taking on as many projects to lower their risk.
Least it’s not a cheaply made graph with fancy colours, actual numbers !
Do you have to submit a notice….I opted out last time I build. Might have changed. So maybe these figures are not correct?
I’m not surprised. There are phases of developments being deferred or postponed indefinitely all over the country. Too much uncertainty ranging from construction costs to mortgage rates.
A commencement notice is for a planning approval, whether that be 1 house or 1 apartment block. Bad metric to use.
This is pretty misleading because a commencement notice could be for a bungalow or an apartment block. A 2% decline in commencements over two months on last year doesn’t say anything about the numbers of units being built.
11 comments
Disappointing after the last few months data being up on same period last year.
I’m sure they’re trying their best
[Residential construction volume has been declining for some time.](https://i.imgur.com/YdXk9Xt.png) Government had a brief PR win by hitting their targets at the end of last year, but that was driven by a lot of houses that had been stalled during COVID coming through at once.
The underlying activity in the sector does not make for good reading. Very low delivery of houses now for many years despite having the same number of construction workers as we had in 2004 when we built twice the number of homes.
Just to look into the first 2 months of this year vs last year, the total is 83 less, or a fall of 2%. So it is going in the wrong direction, but that is about 1 days worth of commencements. So hopefully it can turn around and start going the other way soon.
We’re not going to build fast enough to outpace immigration so it’s pointless even looking at building numbers.
You’ve got a space now where cost of material and cost of labour is increasing so the overall cost of construction is still growing but the actual selling price of the house is stagnating due to interest rates. Profit margin is getting tighter and tighter so a lot of developers are not taking on as many projects to lower their risk.
Least it’s not a cheaply made graph with fancy colours, actual numbers !
Do you have to submit a notice….I opted out last time I build. Might have changed. So maybe these figures are not correct?
I’m not surprised. There are phases of developments being deferred or postponed indefinitely all over the country. Too much uncertainty ranging from construction costs to mortgage rates.
A commencement notice is for a planning approval, whether that be 1 house or 1 apartment block. Bad metric to use.
This is pretty misleading because a commencement notice could be for a bungalow or an apartment block. A 2% decline in commencements over two months on last year doesn’t say anything about the numbers of units being built.