Western Australia remains the strongest residential building market in Australia, according to the bi-annual Housing Scorecard report published by the Housing Industry Association. However, the Western state might not remain the leader of the pack for too long.
HIA economist Geordan Murray said future growth in Australia’s residential building market may rely on Queensland.
“The recovery in Queensland continues to gather momentum. The analysis shows the improvements can be attributed to a boost in multi-unit home building. While Queensland still ranks as the second weakest jurisdiction nationally, the margin to the states sitting mid-table has narrowed markedly,” he said.
“Overall, the Scorecard shows that WA and NSW have caught up to Victoria in terms of historically high levels of new home building activity. However, activity in these states no longer appears to be rising. At this point in time, future growth hinges on the capacity of the Queensland market to sustain the recovery.”
Meanwhile, the ACT took a tumble down the league table, sliding from fourth place to sixth place.
“Lower levels of activity in multi-unit segment drove the decline, although there were also emerging signs of weakness in the ACT’s detached house building market,” Murray said.
The HIA Housing Scorecard benchmarks the contemporary performance of fourteen key indicators of activity in residential building against long term averages in each state and territory. This analysis is aggregated in a scoring system to generate a league table ranking the relative strength and weakness of residential building conditions in each jurisdiction.
