Building consents for new houses, excluding apartments, fell 5.2% in April, according to Statistics New Zealand

There was a boom in approvals sought for new apartments in April, according to new figures from Statistics New Zealand.

However, if the always-volatile apartment numbers are excluded, the building consents figures for new houses were actually down 5.2% on a seasonally-adjusted basis during the month.

Including apartments the seasonally adjusted figures were up 1.5% in the month.

While there is an overall recovery in residential building activity going on, the monthly figures have been rather up and down. The April decline follows a surge in activity in March.

However, April would have been affected by the late timing of Easter along with the fact that Anzac Day was directly before a weekend.

Stats NZ said in April there was a total of 2082 new dwellings were consented. This consisted of 1650 non-apartment dwellings and 432 apartments - including 156 retirement village units.

This was the third time in six months that the number of new apartments consented was greater than 400.

There were 492 apartments consented in November 2013, and 473 in December – the highest monthly apartment numbers since April 2008, when 771 apartments were consented.

Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said on the overall April figures that the underlying picture was weaker, "but within the range of what we were expecting given the potential for a large negative Easter effect this year".

"We expect that the strong upward trend in homebuilding activity will reassert itself in the May numbers."

Gordon said activity data for April had been consistently on the soft side, "reinforcing our prior view that the timing of Easter this year could have an unusually large negative impact.

"With Easter Monday and Anzac Day falling in the same week, it appears that this three-day workweek may have become a week-long break for many people. Of course we'll need to see the full suite of May data to confirm whether there was such an effect."

Stats NZ said eight of the 16 regions consented more new dwellings, including apartments, in April 2014 than in April 2013.

• The regions with the greatest increases were:
• Auckland – up 266, to 697 (including 224 more apartments)
• Canterbury – up 157, to 554 (including 40 more apartments)
• Waikato – up 58, to 261 (including 69 apartments).

The greatest decrease was in Wellington – down 89, to 149 (including 87 less apartments).

The Auckland market has attracted a lot of attention because it has largely driven national house prices up in the past year.

The Government and the Auckland Council have enacted the Auckland Housing Accord, which is targeting 39,000 new dwellings to be approved over a three year period.

For the first four months of this year Auckland's seen 2155 new dwellings consented, which is a 29.1% increase on the 1669 dwellings approved in the same period a year ago.

However, in the latest month, while the overall figure of 697 consented is up some 61.7% on the comparative figure of 431 a year ago, if you take off apartment approvals the latest figure is just 456 actual houses consented, compared with 414 in April last year. That's an increase of just 10.1% on a year ago.