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Housing approvals in October hit a 22-month high, but will the trend continue?
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has announced that the total number of dwellings approved rose 4.2 per cent over the month of October 2024, to a total of 15,498 dwellings. Approvals are still lagging behind where building industry advocates would like to see them, but the increase still came as welcome news to many.
Commenting on this result, Housing Industry Association (HIA) economist, Maurice Tapang, noted that this result marks the highest number of approvals in almost two years, and said the data “confirms the rise in home building activity expected in 2025”.
Tapang noted that detached house approvals have shown solid growth over the latter half of the year, increasing by 8.7 per cent compared to the same time in the previous year.
Across the capital cities, the economist highlighted that detached house approvals rose most significantly year-on-year in Western Australia (42 per cent), South Australia (22.3 per cent) and Queensland (13.6 per cent), with all other jurisdictions recording declines over the same period.
Weighing in on the uplift to overall construction levels, Tapang highlighted that the “unchanged interest rate settings” have provided “some degree of certainty for consumers”.
“Households are returning to new home building despite there being no cut to the cash rate. This is because unemployment remains at very low levels, while housing demand remains strong,” Tapang said.
Analysis from the Property Council of Australia attributed the month-on-month increase to a boost in approvals for high-rise apartments in NSW and Victoria, with the 2,782 high-rise apartments approved in October increasing from 1,815 in September, and marking the highest result since January of this year.
Through this activity, the industry body highlighted that approvals of private dwellings, excluding houses, rose by 24.8 per cent over the month to 5,859, representing the highest level since May 2023.
Even with this month-on-month surge, the Property Council said that only 56,797 apartments and townhouses have been approved over the month, falling short of the 63,307 approvals recorded over the preceding 12 months, and the nearly 100,000 approvals during the same period in 2017–18.
Speaking on the month’s results, Property Council group executive policy and advocacy, Matthew Kandelaars, said it was “pleasing” to see the increased apartment approvals, but noted that “they are still close to half of what we were building over the same period in 2017–18”.
“Apartment approvals are historically volatile, so we need more consistency to identify a trend, but the increase is positive,” Kandelaars said.
Looking ahead, the executive emphasised that “apartments are an integral part of our housing ecosystem and can positively tip the supply equation at scale”, and stressed the need to “get back to the construction levels seen nearly 10 years ago”.
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