There was little movement in total New Home Sales in February, but Western Australia and Victoria enjoyed positive results, said the Housing Industry Association.
Detached house sales increased in two out of five mainland states in February 2017 – Western Australia and Victoria. Detached house sales in WA increased by 11.3 per cent in February 2017 following a rise of 12.1 per cent in January. Note that these rates of growth are exaggerated by the extremely low base for detached house sales. Detached house sales in Victoria posted a monthly gain of 5.1 per cent in February. Elsewhere for the mainland states, in February detached house sales fell by 12.6 per cent in New South Wales and were down by 5.7 per cent in Queensland and 0.2 per cent in South Australia.
“The HIA New Homes Sales Report – a survey of Australia’s largest home builders – reveals a bare movement of only +0.2 per cent in February 2017,” said HIA Chief Economist, Dr Harley Dale. “There was also very little movement in the two sub-series with detached house sales ticking down by 0.1 per cent in February and the sales of ‘multi-units’ growing by 1.0 per cent.”
“The profiles for HIA detached house sales and ABS detached house building approvals are very similar. In the case of detached house sales, over the three months to February this year the volume fell by 2.2 per cent to a level 5.2 per cent lower than achieved over the three months to February last year,” noted Harley Dale.
“The updates that we are receiving for these two key leading indicators of new home building activity are consistent with a modest reduction in national new detached house commencements in 2016/17. We are forecasting a decline of 2 per cent in detached house commencements in Australia in 2016/17 following a similar-sized fall of 1 per cent in 2015/16.”
“As with all aspects of the current housing cycle there are large differences in conditions for detached housing between states and territories. HIA’s detached house sales series for the five mainland states has been consistently highlighting this point for some years now,” concluded Harley Dale. “In 2017 we expect the profile for leading indicators such as detached house sales to slowly improve for Western Australia and South Australia. At the same time the volume of detached house sales on the eastern seaboard is expected to trend lower.”
