Australian Bureau of Statistics data on building approvals today show that while approvals rose 10.4% nationally in July, total dwelling approvals are still 5.1% below the five year average.
“Just focusing on month-to-month figures does not provide the full picture. We need to look at the trend over the year to truly understand the circumstances we are in and continuing low building approvals as shown in the graph below, highlight that we still face a chronic shortage that is still trending down,” said Col Dutton, UDIA National President.
“These results show some positive ground for apartments but the overall picture shows that we are building less than we did five years ago which has material impact on our ability to achieve anywhere close to the 1.2 million homes target,” he said.
Source: ABS, UDIA
We are facing an ever-increasing housing supply gap across the continuum. Over the past 12 months, we saw a significant decline in the number of dwelling approvals with 165,250 dwellings approved reflecting a decline from 175,130 in the preceding 12-month period.
Critically, to deliver the National Housing Target of 1.2 million homes, industry needs at least 1.33 million approvals over the five years (given an historic attrition rate of 10% between approvals and actual commencements):
That is an average of 264,000 approvals each year for 240,000 completions.
To put this in perspective, over the last five financial years (2019 on), 934,160 dwellings were completed nationally – an average of 186,830 dwellings pa. The previous period (2014–18) was the highest five-year volume of completions ever achieved in Australia with a total of 988,350 completions.
The data shows the Minister for Housing is right to target the supply of new homes and the key to unlocking more housing is incentivising industry capacity to deliver homes and this means we need faster approval times.
Australia calls on the Government to focus on these key areas to boost dwellings which will push us closer to meeting the National Housing Accord Targets.
–ENDS–
Media Enquiries:
Deanna Lane | Director, National Media & Communications | 0416 295 898 | media@udia.com.au