Australia’s residential building industry representative, the Housing Industry Association (HIA) reveals the gains delivered by a strong home
building market to the wider Australian economy. HIA has recently released the
Winter 2014 edition of its National Outlook, Australia’s most comprehensive
housing report card.
According to HIA Chief Economist, Dr Harley Dale, the report card
confirms a strongly performing new home building market in Australia, which is
delivering gains to the wider economy in terms of both growth and employment. He
notes that the national new home building recovery is a positive story of immense
significance, given the disproportionate focus on negative economic news.
Sustained recovery is also being observed in renovations investment from
the decade low of 2013.
Harley Dale explains that new dwelling commencements, the key metric for
the sector, are forecast to hit over 184,000 in 2014, which would be the second
highest level on record, and will continue to maintain this historically high
level through next year.
While the current recovery in residential construction still masks
considerable differences in conditions across states and territories, and in
terms of building type, for both new housing and renovations activity, Harley
Dale believes a further broadening of the recovery would certainly be a
desirable outcome.
New dwelling commencements are forecast to increase by 9.6 per cent in
2014, following growth of 11.1 per cent in 2013, reaching a peak of 184,291.
Commencements are forecast to decline by 4.4 per cent to a level of 176,238 in
2015. Total investment in renovations is forecast to increase by 3.8 per cent
this year and by 1.3 per cent in 2015 to reach a value of over $29.4 billion.
