National, state & territory level dwelling demolition approvals

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is working towards the development of quarterly estimates of small area dwelling stock, completions and demolitions for release in 2022. Dwelling stock statistics (the total number of dwellings in a given area at a point in time) are currently available from the Census of Population and Housing every five years. More frequent estimates of dwelling stock are valuable for economic and housing policy development and evaluation, and informing planning and service provision decisions. The newly developed statistics will contain quarterly estimates of demolitions, completions and stock at Local Government Area (LGA) and Statistical Area 2 (SA2) level from July 2016 onwards.

Removals from stock are currently a key data gap. To reduce this gap, this article presents preliminary data on the number of dwellings approved for demolition at state and territory level from the June 2016 quarter to the March 2021 quarter. The data has been sourced from the existing Building Approvals collection, and therefore only includes dwellings which have been approved to be fully demolished by a local council or approving authority (see 'Scope and coverage' below for more information). This article follows the release of small area dwelling demolition approvals for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland from the August 2020 edition of Building Approvals, Australia.

The data does not represent actual demolitions taking place (i.e. it does not account for demolitions that were approved but did not go ahead, or for the time lag between approval and actual demolition). The ABS is developing a method to estimate 'realised' demolitions (i.e. the dwelling approved for demolition is actually demolished) and investigating ways to account for other removals from stock that do not require approval (see 'Future work' for more information). 

Quarterly additions to stock (dwelling completions) are currently available at state level in the ABS publication Building Activity, Australia. The ABS is developing a method to model these estimates down to SA2 level. Experimental small area dwelling completions were released with the June 2020 edition of Building Activity, Australia.

Approvals of dwelling demolitions have been sourced from the ABS' Building Approvals collection. This is a monthly administrative collection that compiles statistics of building work approved from:

• permits issued by local government authorities and other certifying authorities;
• contracts and work authorised by commonwealth, state and local government authorities; and
• major building approvals in areas not subject to normal administrative approval, such as building on remote mine sites.

The statistics compiled from this collection are published monthly in Building Approvals, Australia and are classified to the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS), 2016 Edition.

The scope of the Building Approvals collection includes all residential building work valued at $10,000 or more and all non-residential building work valued at $50,000 or more and comprises:

• construction of new buildings;
• alterations and additions to existing buildings;
• approved non-structural renovation and refurbishment work; and
• approved installation of integral building fixtures.

For the purpose of collecting demolition approvals, the scope has been extended to include full demolitions of existing dwellings regardless of the value of the work. Approval authorities were formally requested to begin submitting demolition approvals to the ABS in July 2018. Where necessary, dwelling demolitions approved from 2016 onwards were also requested. 

ABS building statistics (building approvals, building activity and the dwelling stock series currently under development) classify buildings according to the Functional Classification of Buildings. This defines a dwelling as a self-contained suite of rooms, including cooking and bathing facilities intended for long-term residential use. Regardless of whether they are self-contained or not, rooms within buildings offering institutional care (e.g. hospitals) or temporary accommodation (e.g. motels, hostels and holiday apartments) are not defined as dwellings. This differs from the definition used by the Census (a structure which is intended to have people live in it, and which is habitable on Census night), which can include non-permanent structures such as caravans, houseboats and tents, as well as communal or transitory accommodation such as cabins, hotels, prisons and hospitals.

A dwelling demolition is defined as the complete and intentional dismantling of a dwelling, such that none of the structure remains on site. The scope of the data does not include:

• dwellings demolished without approval;
• dwellings partially demolished;
• dwellings destroyed by natural disasters; or
• dwellings rendered inhabitable by extreme weather events, vandalism, fire damage, modification etc. (except where approval has been granted for the demolition of the remainder of a damaged dwelling).

Data are presented for the following types of dwellings:

• 'Houses' - defined as detached buildings used for long term residential purposes, consisting of only one dwelling unit and are not a result of alterations or additions to a pre-existing building
• ‘Other residential’ – defined as dwellings that are attached to other dwellings in some structural way

Data for new dwellings approved used in this article have been taken from the April 2021 edition of Building Approvals, Australia.

The ABS is working towards producing estimates of the number of dwellings demolished at SA2 and LGA for release in 2022. This will involve:

• working closely with local councils and state and territory government agencies to improve the quality and completeness of demolition approval information. Where this information is not available or not feasible to collect (i.e. some approval authorities have system limitations in collecting or reporting this information), the ABS will investigate statistical modelling methods and other possible auxiliary data sources to account for missing data or unapproved demolitions. 
• developing a method to estimate the likelihood that a demolition approval is realised (i.e. the dwelling approved for demolition is actually demolished) and the time lag between demolition approval and actual demolition. Possible data sources that assess whether a demolition has occurred include commencements of new buildings from the Building Activity collection and aerial imagery. 

The ABS is also investigating data sources to capture other reductions in dwelling stock (i.e. dwellings destroyed in natural disasters). However, work so far has indicated that there are a number of logistical challenges associated with the collection of this data, and therefore they will be difficult to incorporate into quarterly dwelling stock estimates in a timely way.