Building And Real Estate Boom In Manukau Continues

Manukau’s housing boom has seen the highest number of consents for new building projects issued by Manukau City Council in 25 years. There were 1917 dwelling consents issued in 2002, up 20% from a year earlier.

House sales in Manukau December were up 38% and prices rose 10% on average.

Immigration and migration are major factors driving the boom. Manukau City’s population increased by 16,000 in the year to June 2002. Of those, 9,500 were New Zealanders moving to Manukau from other parts of the country. The rest of the increase was from natural population growth and the arrival of immigrants.

Large numbers of immigrants continue to choose to live in the Auckland region and around 7% of the total settle in Manukau.

New Zealanders are still leaving the country long term in large numbers but they are exceeded by huge inflows of new settlers. The number of permanent and long term immigrants outnumbered the departing residents by just over 38,000 in the year to December. This is the highest net inflow since 1995.

In addition to large scale home building there are a number of large retail and other non-housing projects underway in Manukau, including the building of three schools, two state and one Catholic. The largest is a $15 million school state school in Howick. The Auckland region is the only area of New Zealand where school rolls are growing significantly and Manukau schools have 26% of the region’s students.

The estimated rate of economic growth in Manukau was 3% in the year to December. However there was a 20% fall in hours paid in Manukau construction firms.

The spread of new housing developments in the Botany/East Tamaki area is continuing faster than expected and the area is scheduled to be full by 2009, rather than by 2015 as was initially predicted.

Manukau mayor Sir Barry Curtis says the building industry is of vital importance.

“Construction is one of the key sectors in Manukau’s economy and many businesses are linked to it directly or indirectly. There are more than 17,000 businesses in Manukau. Over the past year 90 new businesses were set up in the main commercial centres, and 75 in the main industrial areas. This figure probably underestimates the total as no records are kept on the numbers of new businesses being run or set up from home.”

The new businesses in the city include the Ulrich Aluminium plant in Wiri. The company will be setting up its new premises having recently decided to move to Manukau from Otahuhu.

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