July saw a big jump in the number of building consents issued for new dwellings, according to the latest figures from Statistics NZ.
Building consents were issued for 3352 new dwellings in July, up a whopping 53.9% compared to the 2178 issued in June, and up 9.6% compared to the 3058 issued in July last year.
The July jump was mainly due to an increase in consents for stand alone houses, which were up 42.4% in July compared to July last year.
That in turn, was mainly driven by a large housing project in the Queensland-Lakes District, in which 385 stand alone houses were consented.
However that appears to be a one-off, and on an annual basis building consents are still declining.
In the 12 months to July this year, 33,921 new dwellings were consented throughout the country, down 22% compared to the year to July 2023, and down 33% compared to the 12 months to July 2022.
That means 16,693 fewer homes were consented in the year to July 2024 compared to the same period two years ago.
The value of the building work, excluding land), for the new homes consented in the 12 months to July this year was $15.365 billion. That's down $4.739 billion (-23.6%) compared to the same period two years ago, suggesting more difficult times for the building industry.
The interactive chart below tracks building consents numbers by region.
Building consents - residential
Select chart tabs
•You can have articles like this delivered directly to your inbox via our free Property Newsletter. We send it out 3-5 times a week with all of our property-related news, including auction results, interest rate movements and market commentary and analysis. To start receiving them, register here (it's free) and when approved you can select any of our free email newsletters.
16 Comments
And Debt.
"In April 2021 the total value of housing loans was estimated to be $307.9 billion, having grown by over $30 billion in the preceding 12 month period"
(NB: 30 years ago, housing loans weren't much more than $30 billion, let alone that being an annual increase.
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/styles/scale_width_ful… )
"New Zealand society as a whole continues to dream the dream of owner-occupied home-ownership despite changing economic and environmental conditions. The local real-estate sector promotes myths of moving onto (and up) the property ladder accordingly, and New Zealand politicians foster the idea of a stable democracy rooted in property-ownership.."
‘Told you so’ friction as dire state of city finances revealed | Waikato Times
Van Oosten acknowledged a creditworthiness downgrade could increase borrowing costs.
But wait..it's not all bad!!!! Where's that can?
But one potential positive discussed is that high growth councils like Hamilton may soon be able to borrow up to 350% of their revenue compared to 280% now.
For bw and the debt freaks .... (because their nonsense is beyond annoying!) ...
Consider that Production = Land + Labor + Capital + Entrepreneurship
Capital and Land are existing assets that are paid for using existing money.
But what of Labor and Entrepreneurship? They are part of Production process. They get paid money, right? Where does that come from?
Let's pretend for a moment that the money supply is fixed. Thus Labor and Entrepreneurship would need to be paid from the existing money supply. And further new products could only be purchased from the existing money supply too.
What would happen?
Basically, with a fixed money supply, money would become worth more! Every year $1 would be worth more.
Imagine going to work each week and each week you were paid less because money was worth more? And like Bitcoin, you'd get rich just by holding. No need to work or produce anything!
So how is the money supply expanded so that $1 today is roughly $1 at the end of a year?
We create new money. We expand the money supply. How is this done? We create 'debt'. In essence all money is, in fact, debt.
We can argue (as bw and the debt freaks never do, because, you know, they say 'all debt is bad') that increasing levels of debt is dangerous. It's not. It only becomes an issue when the money supply is expanded too quickly (sometimes we get inflation), or not fast enough (sometimes we get deflation). Note that inflation and deflation can have sources other than the money supply, e.g. radical advances in technology.
Where 'stores of value', like gold or bitcoin, remain in fixed supply, they increase in value but only when measured against the necessarily expanding money supply. Any 'thing' - where we all agree that 'thing' is valuable and is fixed in supply - will increase in value when measured against a necessarily expanding money supply. It's just simple maths.
Sorry, debt freaks, you're becoming boring.
And a source of pollution akin to what is flushed down a toilet.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.