NZ home building consents rise 7.6% in December

NZ home building consents rise 7.6% in December, taking annual pace to six-year high

Jan. 30 (BusinessDesk) - New Zealand building consents for residential housing rose 7.6 percent in December, taking the annual level of new permits issued by local councils to a six-year high.

New dwelling consents, including apartments, rose to a seasonally adjusted 2,169 in December from 2,016 a month earlier, according to Statistics New Zealand. Excluding apartments and retirement village units, which are typically volatile from month to month, seasonally adjusted consents climbed 11 percent to 1,762, the highest level since February 2008.

Annual residential issuance rose 30 percent to an unadjusted 21,300 in 2013 from a year earlier, the most since 2007 when 25,590 permits were issued. Of that, 18,892 new houses received consents, up 25 percent on the year, and 2,408 new apartments were consented, a gain of 38 percent.

The annual gain in new dwelling consents was driven by increases in Auckland and Christchurch, the country’s two biggest cities, whose property markets have been bubbling away due to a lack of housing stock.

“The construction sector ended 2013 on a high note, with residential building consents much stronger than expected in December,” Westpac Banking Corp senior economist Michael Gordon said in a note. “The Canterbury rebuild continues to dominate the totals, but the re-emergence of the Auckland apartment market is a notable recent trend.”

Rising property prices, particularly in Auckland and Christchurch, became a headache for the Reserve Bank last year, which was loathe to lift interest rates in response for fear of fuelling demand for an already elevated currency. Instead, the central bank imposed restrictions in October on the level of low-equity mortgage lending banks could undertake as a means to reduce the level of riskier loans.

Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler today said “there appears to have been some moderation in the housing market in recent months,” in his statement holding the official cash rate unchanged at 2.5 percent.

Today’s figures show a 12 percent increase in the value of non-residential building consents issued to $379 million in December from the same month a year earlier, for an annual increase of 6.9 percent to $4.18 billion.

The value of all building permits climbed 29 percent to $1.07 billion in December, for an annual increase of 20 percent to $12.08 billion.

(BusinessDesk)

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