Big housing project in Queenstown-Lakes pushes up July building consent numbers

Property / news

Building consent numbers jumped in July but the long term trend is still declining

30th Aug 24, 12:13pm by Greg Ninness

Photo by Josh Olalde on Unsplash

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.

The comment stream on this article is now closed.

Building consents - residential

Select chart tabs

Source: Statistics NZ

•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.

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.

17 Comments

by Jay Lim | 30th Aug 24, 1:14pm 1724980465

People have money.

I heard that building a new house in Queenstown costs at least 2 Million.

by bw | 30th Aug 24, 2:36pm 1724985376

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… )

by tdigss | 30th Aug 24, 4:06pm 1724990762

$5k/m2 is not a bad guess for midrange house (about $1m for 200m2 house).

Of course the sky is the limit when it comes to size and level of quality in QT

by Colin Cameron | 30th Aug 24, 5:15pm 1724994930

Henley farm cheapest area in Queenstown free standing house cost you 4k a sqm plus section.

30 percent of people that buy in QT Wanaka live overseas all with a minimum net worth of 10mil plus. So they ain't worried about a tradesman hourly rate.

by bw | 30th Aug 24, 1:33pm 1724981630

"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.."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_property_bubble

by General Comment | 30th Aug 24, 3:12pm 1724987539

While the basis of that article may be factual the excerpt you've quoted reads like an opinion piece, I'm surprised it's lasted that long without being called out. Wikipedia strives to be scholarly, not to push an agenda or influence opinions.

by rastus1 | 30th Aug 24, 2:27pm 1724984868

I'm sure the govt and council is standing by to fund all the associated - medical, schools, roads and so on.

by HouseMouse | 30th Aug 24, 2:53pm 1724986420

Heard today that Auckland Council are going to whack up the development contributions for stormwater etc for residential redevelopment. That won’t help out in terms of recovery in the sector

by The Person | 30th Aug 24, 3:12pm 1724987550

Hopefully people will put in a soakage pit instead. Recharge the groundwater and save washing pollutants out to the ocean.

by kwbrn | 30th Aug 24, 3:28pm 1724988503

That may have worked when we had quarter acre sections. The only thing it will achieve is too flood the neighbours.

by The Person | 30th Aug 24, 3:31pm 1724988673

You don't need a 1/4 acre, only a couple square meters. Or even less for a borehole, mine is just a manhole cover and then a borehole down through the bassalt. Does depend on geology though, not going to work everywhere.

by tis i | 30th Aug 24, 5:17pm 1724995075

Not going to work anywhere north of the bridge.

by Colin Cameron | 30th Aug 24, 5:18pm 1724995107

Soakholes wereby the dp are fed to only two places in NZ sereby you can still do that. Taupo (pumice) and Waimate as riverbed. Most councils want to charge you continuously for getting rid of water

by structural engineer | 31st Aug 24, 7:27am 1725046075

"Most councils want to charge you continuously for getting rid of water"

Its funny because its true.

by The Person | 2nd Sep 24, 10:41am 1725230496

It's a bit hard to understand your statement, but if you are saying Taupo and Waimate are the only places you can do soakage for stormwater, i know from personal experience that you can do it in Nelson and Auckland also.

We are on the combined sewer so council and watercare are quite keen not to put stormwater into it.

I was not aware of councils having a stormwater charge, as opposed to funding from general rates, do you have an example?

by rastus1 | 30th Aug 24, 4:01pm 1724990465

‘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.

by ChrisOfNoFame | 31st Aug 24, 2:59pm 1725073141

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.