New Zealand residential building consents slide in November after quake

Thursday 19th January 2017

New Zealand's residential building consents took a tumble in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, largely due to earthquake disruption in the capital city of Wellington.

Seasonally adjusted dwelling consents fell 9.2 percent to 2,406 percent in November, after rising 2 percent in October, Statistics New Zealand said. Permits for new houses fell 7.7 percent to 1,634 following a 1.4 percent slide in October. The monthly figures were helped by a jump in Auckland permits, which rose 46 percent to 1,156. Consents in Wellington, however, dropped 57 percent to 132.

"Once processing capacity and application demand have returned to normal, we expect Wellington’s strong upward trend to continue," said ASB Bank senior economist Jane Turner.

Record net migration is putting pressure on the nation's housing market where a shortage of supply is pushing up prices in Auckland, the country's largest city, making accommodation unaffordable for many. New Zealand's central bank has long signalled that an overheated housing market is a key risk to financial stability and that much of the solution lies in supply.

"Strong population growth over the past few years has lifted housing demand right across the country, and we expected momentum to continue at least for another year," ASB's Turner said.

Today's data show the number of homes consented rose 13.1 percent to 30,303 in the year through November. Of those, 10,137 new homes were consented in Auckland, although still below the 13,000 estimated to be needed to keep up with an expanding population. In Canterbury, where the Christchurch earthquake residential rebuild is slowly winding down, 6,054 new homes were consented, down 9.1 percent from November 2015, Statistics New Zealand said.

The value of building consents fell 5.1 percent to $1.58 billion in November from October. Residential building consents increased 2.5 percent in value to $1.17 billion, while non-residential permits fell 22 percent to $411 million.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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