Australia now faces a three tier economy when it comes to individual state performance in matters such as construction, home lending and property prices.
This result, from CommSec’s
State of the States reports, groups the ACT, NSW and Victoria as the most successfully performing states. Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are grouped in second place while Western Australia lags behind.
With regards to new home starts, the ACT is way ahead on a year-by-year basis with annual dwelling commencements increasing by 22.9% in the December quarter. NSW was the only other state to experience positive growth over the year with overall figures rising by 15.1%.
Home starts last year were greatest in NSW when compared to the decade average with commencements almost 87% above this 10-year baseline.
Levels were higher than this average in the ACT (+58.2%), Victoria (+19.4%) and Queensland (+17%) while other states fell below.
As for home lending, the CommSec report puts the ACT again in top place with the number of housing finance commitments 21.4% above the average for the decade. All states except Western Australia and the Northern Territory had higher levels of home lending than this long-term baseline.
On an annual basis, growth of home loans was strongest in Tasmania where levels rose by 8.3%, followed by Victoria which increased by 1.5%.
The Northern Territory was in top spot when looking at the value of construction work completed with almost 30% more work done than the decade average.
This was followed by NSW (+20.4%), Victoria (+17.5%) and the ACT (+12.6%). Levels of construction activity in all other states and territories were below the ten-year average.
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