The number of new homes being consented continues to run at record levels, with 48,899 dwellings consented last year, according to Statistics New Zealand.
And the numbers are continuing to rise.
The 48,899 new homes consented in 2021 was up 24% from 2020 and up 63% compared to 2016.
However the rate of growth appears to be slowing, with 12,859 new homes consented in the fourth quarter of last year, up a comparatively modest 11.5% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.
Much of the growth over the last five years has occurred in Auckland, with consents for new dwellings more than doubling from 10,026 in 2016 to 20,529 in 2021.
In percentage terms the biggest growth last year was in retirement village units, with 2856 consented in 2021, up 53.1% compared to 2020.
Townhouses and home units had the second highest growth with 16,327 consented last year, up 40.7% compared to 2020.
However standalone houses remain the most popular type of dwelling by a substantial margin, with 25,564 consented last year, up 15.1% from 2020.
And the popularity of apartments may be waning slightly with 4152 apartment units consented last year.
Although that was up 11% from 2020, it was still down 12.8% compared to the peak of 4762 apartments that were consented in 2019.
The total construction value, excluding land, of new dwellings consented last year was $18.783 billion, up 29.2% compared to 2020.
On top of that consents were issued for a further $2.407 billion of structural alteration work to existing dwellings last year, up 24.4% compared to 2020.
That took the total value of residential construction work consented last year to $21.19 billion, up 28.7% compared to 2020.
Non-residential construction, which includes buildings such as offices, shops and factories, also had strong growth last year with $8.19 billion of work consented, up 16.2% compared to 2020.
That followed a decline of 5.5% in the value of non-residential building consents issued in 2020.
That took the total value of all types of building work consented last year to $29.881 billion, up 24.1% from 2020.
The interactive graphs below show the trends in the number of residential consents issued in each region and the trends in the types of dwellings being consented.
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59 Comments
How are we progressing with training for tradies?
Everybody thinks you need a degree to succeed which is simply untrue
We need skilled labour to build the things we need and to value the people who do it
building a house in NZ requires very little skills. ppl who can put together a lego can build a house.
building rockets or satellites require skills.
Depends on whether you want Chinese levels of workmanship or something more towards the quality end of the spectrum.
Brock,
Are you saying that all the leaky buildings in NZ were put up by Chinese? No they weren't. Most of them were designed and built by good old Kiwis, then signed off by yet more good old No. 8 wire Kiwis. This country should be ashamed.
I have lost count of the apartment blocks i have seen in Tauranga/Mt. Maunganui covered in plastic for 'remediation'. You might find it interesting to look at the Wikipedia entry for The Leaky Home Crisis. In 2008 PWC produced a report with an estimate of $11.30 billion for some 42,000 buildings. Others put the figures much higher.
Apart from that little issue-i know people whose lives have been badly affected by this-Newshub did a report in Dec. with the title; New Zealand homes cold, mouldy, poor housing worsening mental health issues.
The Chinese had f..... all do do with this.
The quality of workmanship in this country, whatever the ethnicity, is garbage.
Obviously there's the occasional exception to this rule.
Exactly. The nails protruding down into my bathroom ceiling are a daily reminder of the "she'll be right" attitude.
Four nice shiny concrete pads in the village here.
Stacks of framing dropped off earlier in the week. Three lots nice and flat on the pads. One house lot (2 bundles) left on uneven dirt and it's about to pi55 down all weekend. Wonder whether the builder when they eventually start will send it back or just use it.
Its usual practice to have to plumb all frames. Even the framing left on the flat will move with moisture, be it rain or humidity.
Not to mention the absolutely shabby quality of things like cabinetry where the hinges break within a couple of years, , chrome tapwear that is, in reality, no better than ironed on tinfoil, cabinet handles etc that the surface bubbles, toilets that stain and the porcelain breaks down around the water line, basins made from composite materials that stain and break down around the plughole where the water sits, paint jobs that look like the paint was watered down so much, it ended up nothing but paint stained water, the stainless steel of kitchen sinks of such poor quality, it begins life stained and never looks clean..
I could go on and on from the top to the bottom, but people probably are too busy earning the deposit for these $1million houses that will need extensive renovations in 10 years, if it is even worth doing
Yes this is true it was not the Chinese that built our leaky buildings. It was Pacific Islanders, unskilled labour imported in the mid 90's to quickly build our new apartments.
The design was the main problem, with no cavities in the cladding, but the use of un-treated timber (which was allowed to keep up with demand) meant they would have rotted in any case.
Cantilevered decking was a major culprit, no eaves and the fashion for Mediterranean style houses in rainy NZ
Nah. What I was saying was that the build quality in dear comrade's home country is truly terrible and that using skilled workers results in higher quality.
But I did enjoy the strawman. Top effort! Gold star!
The PwC report only went off plans too - i.e. what plans would have resulted in leaky buildings and the cost of these. Their remit didn't even include what was actually built. Rottenomics highlights the subsequent analysis done that points closer to $50 billion in cost and counting.
NZ, home of racism, stereotypes, and sarcasm.
-7
lol, no attribution to anything means this is simply the whining of a toddler. Back up your slander with any facts and you might get some support.
Ironic.
Where are you from, India? They can be pretty damn racist.
Yes, but it is only acceptable to label anglo-saxons racist
I've seen some houses put together by Chinese builders in NZ. You are correct, they definitely do not have any skills.
Funny you say that. On my sisters house they didn’t overlap the cladding properly. Had to recladd it and throw the old stuff out.
Just to be clear, this response was intended towards the general comment about build quality in New Zealand. I have no idea what the ethnicity of said builders was.
Mate, I bet you couldn’t even cut a square end!
You are absolutely correct. - BUT only if it's a prefab kitset - of which there are a few in NZ and which do qualify as a genuine QuickBuild.
We need to import more skilled labour to build houses for more imported skilled labour.
We need more houses because population growth is unfortunately at the heart of our economic strategy.
Is one of the unfortunate truths with these reports, $30 billion in new consents sounds good, but really, how many houses do this equate too, at what price, where, how many rooms, and what % of the population can afford it is largely ignored.
It's like when the Government talked on how "housing consents haven't been this good since the 1970's", ignoring the fact if you compared population in 1970 (1 million) to todays population (5 million), THEN overlaid consents you would see we are in fact 80% less effective at building than back in the good old days.
If we can't be honest we can't move forward, and it's just all lies.
The population was nearly 3 million in 1970. Auckland three quarters.
Thanks kwbrn, so not as bad, but still not good
The population decreased by 4000 last year. Auctions have stalled. Who are they going to sell all these houses to?
Indeed.
There's been quite a lot of years of underbuilding, and household sizes are getting smaller.
So why do they keep building 5 bedroom Mc Mansions?
Household size is the number of occupants. So we need more houses for the same population.
Apparently for resale value 😂
Because we all work from home. Mentally you shouldn't work in your bedroom. The wife hates me in the dining room and the kids hate me in their bedrooms.
So they aren't 5th bedrooms. They are 3 bed/2 office houses, and man I wish I had one.
Yeah me too - we bought a 4 bedroom place when we had 2 kids, but then a third kid and working from home came along so I've taken over the living room. It would be nice to upgrade to a 5 bedroom, or as you say 4 bed + study place, but the price jump is ridiculous. We're considering getting a "sleepout" built in the backyard, otherwise the garage is the next best space.
Friends of ours were looking at getting a bedroom extension put on. Simple design. When they got some indicative prices they bailed and bought a motor-home instead for hosting sleepover guests. And they now have the bonus of a motor-home to go on holiday with.
Not a bad idea. We looked at doing an extension, one bedroom with ensuite, it was going to be over $150k. Having said that Motor homes aren't cheap either and they depreciate. We ended up renovating the existing house instead as it hadn't been touched since about 1975 and the handles were falling off the windows! Guests have to sleep in the garage, at least they don't over stay their welcome, cant make them too comfortable.
For the price of a 93m2, 3 bedroom one bath one garage house on a half share of 809m2 section in Mt Roskill, you could get this:
4 bed, 3 BR, 3 garage 293 m2 house with two lounges on 2226m2 section in provincial Wellington.
I know which I'd rather have, and it ain't Auckland.
For half the price of that Mt Roskill property, I bought a 180sqm 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house on 1/4 acre in provincial Wellington mid-late last year.
Rimu floors, stained glass features, 2 heat pumps, log fire, tree lined street with a very short stroll to the Wellington commuter rail service.
Sounds nice. I can envision the street. I'm a fan of new houses as I've had to paint and renovate an old one ;)
The data is backward looking. In the near future the numbers will slump.
Increasingly there will be divergence between dwellings consented, and dwellings completed.
It appears most commentary to do with property or the economy is "backward looking" currently, no one seems to want to look forward.
Are building supplies fully available for all consented builds? Buyers are very wary of new builds currently especially buying off plans.
Supplies and also labour. Most construction crowds now aren't offering completion dates on new projects.
If you are disorganised and havent moved your planning to fit with the new normal time frames, then no, building supplies are not readily available. I know a few builders who have massively changed how they work to keep their guys employed.
I wholesale products, we have encouraged our customers to hold more stock - this has worked out well. Those that havent will miss out. We have 60% more stock now than we did at this time last year. Its about working with the conditions, no amount of whingeing will help.
Bit off topic, but I see Macrobusiness are reporting economists in Aus predicting their OCR won't be lifted till August / September, and even with a delayed and minor rise house prices will fall 10%.
'New housing boom continues with nearly 49,000 new homes consented in 2021'
This has to be put into context to mean anything.
If it's 49,000 consents to meet 49,000 houses which there is an immediate demand ie a willingness and ability to pay for, then supply would equal demand.
But if it's 49,000 consents for only a 20,000 ability to buy now demand, then there is a serious over consent which means that many of those consents won't be built anytime soon, so averaged out this means - what?
If it was 49,000 houses getting built for only 20,000 ability to buy now demand, then it starts to get interesting re price falls.
Can you live in a consent?
Not sure where you are going with that reply, or if you haven't understood the points I was making?
More consents going through than will be actually be built over the next 12 months perhaps.
The point I was trying to make is that if you are building to the trend then consents should be indicative of demand that will exist when they are built.
Of course, we know that the supply and demand economics is so far out of syn. in NZ, that this is not correct. Hence my point is that until you put the reported consent numbers into the correct context, what does reporting 'a record number' even mean?
Which of course could mean as you state, a record number of overbuilds, especially considering what could be a record decline in demand.
Remember, we were somewhere in the range of having 65k-80k house shortage before COVID hit and migration went into reverse. If we are about to build 50k just this year, we are way into over build territory.
Fortuitously, the government is opening the border this year, possibly just in time to stop an over supply? Hard to know...
A large number of kiwis will be leaving.
I am sick of that narrative.
We won't get flooded with immigrants, there won't be the jobs.
And plenty of young kiwis will leave for Aus.
Not making any predictions. However, if you have your ear to the ground in recruiter markets, they are screaming out for workers. The low unemployment rate is an indicator of that as well. Also if lots of young kiwis leave for Aus (which I encourage them to do because this govt hates them), then that will leave even more jobs open.
IMO it could go either way, or down the middle.
Fair enough. Well, if there are a significant number of immigrants then many of those will be replacing those leaving, so I can't see a big gain in net terms.
Most of the immigrants will be lower-middle income and will have little impact on the housing market. Indirectly, if the numbers are big enough, they might help support it a little through rental demand.
I think it will go down the middle. We will lose well trained, English speaking kiwis to Australia etc, and gain low skilled, non English speaking immigrants. Great.
The visa requirements have changed and low skilled workers are unlikely to get work visas anymore. our traditionally largest pool of immigrants (Chinese) can’t get a passport issued or renewed.
Maybe we’ll get the Indians back as unemployment rises there but we’ll have fierce competition for them from Canada and Germany. They’ll take one look at Auckland and work out the cost of living figures don’t add up any more. I don’t see migrants flooding in ever again at the levels per-Covid.
Agree with this, I think once we open up, the demand for skilled immigrants to fill high paying jobs is absolutely off the chart in big western countries (England/US/Canada/Aus). We will be lucky to compete when it comes to cost of living, so are likely to not benefit.
Housemouse - ' And plenty of young kiwis will leave for Aus '
There has been the opportunity for young Kiwi's to leave to Aussie for sometime, just because we are opening our board's does not mean a flood of Kiwi's out, given the experience of many Kiwi's in Aussie, US, UK and else where in the world we equally may see a surprising number of Kiwi's home !
Time will tell, there are lots of opportunities in Aussie but the job market here is equally booming !
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