The latest result for the HIA New Home Sales Report, a survey of Australia’s largest volume builders, highlights a second consecutive rise for sales in the month of November 2014. Renewed upward momentum in the multi-unit segment drove growth in overall new home sales in late 2014. In fact sales of multi-units surged in both October and November to reach their highest level since September 2003.
Whilst detached house sales increased by 4.0 per cent in Victoria, 16.0 per cent in Queensland, and 0.3 per cent in South Australia, detached house sales fell in November in New South Wales (-5.6 per cent) and Western Australia (-10.6 per cent, following a +24.8 per cent result in October).
HIA says the key leading indicator measures of building approvals and new home sales suggest this re-concentration of growth in the ‘multi-unit’ segment will persist into 2015. They call for a focus on housing policy reform to a further burst of growth in detached house construction which would at the same time provide productivity gains for the broader Australian economy.
