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Building Approvals, Australia

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Provides the number of dwelling units and value of buildings approved

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Reference period
December 2020
Released
3/02/2021
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Key statistics

  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved rose 10.9% in December.
  • Private sector houses rose 15.8%, in seasonally adjusted terms, while private sector dwellings excluding houses rose 2.3%.
  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for the value of non-residential building approved rose 10.1%.

Dwellings approved

December key figures
  Dec 20Nov 20 to Dec 20Dec 19 to Dec 20
  no.%%
Seasonally adjusted
 Total dwelling units approved1953710.9 22.8
 Private sector houses1363815.8 55.6
 Private sector dwellings excluding houses  5625  2.3-19.3

The number of dwellings approved in Australia rose 10.9% in December, in seasonally adjusted terms. Private sector houses increased by 15.8% in December, to a record high. Approvals for private houses were strong across the country, with Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia all reaching record highs in seasonally adjusted terms. New South Wales recorded its highest private house approval figure since March 2000 and it was Queensland's highest since September 1994. Approvals for private sector dwellings excluding houses remained at subdued levels in December, rising 2.3%, but remaining 19.3% lower than December 2019.

Dwellings approved, states and territories
Seasonally adjusted
Private sector housesPrivate sector housesTotal dwelling units approvedTotal dwelling units approved
no.Monthly % changeno.Monthly % change
New South Wales2,70816.25,0221.8
Victoria4,13317.25,3308.6
Queensland2,8677.54,32524.0
South Australia1,12533.61,31216.7
Western Australia2,0935.32,4737.8
Tasmanianana46366.5
Northern Territorynananana
Australian Capital Territorynananana
Australia13,63815.819,53710.9

Dwelling approvals rose in Tasmania (66.5%), Queensland (24.0%), South Australia (16.7%), Victoria (8.6%), Western Australia (7.8%) and New South Wales (1.8%).

Approvals for private sector houses rose in South Australia (33.6%), Victoria (17.2%), New South Wales (16.2%), Queensland (7.5%) and Western Australia (5.3%).

Value of building approved

Value of building approved, by building type
Seasonally adjusted
$mMonthly % change
New residential building6,039.31.4
Alterations and additions to residential building941.68.1
Total residential building6,981.02.3
Non-residential building3,771.410.1
Total building10,752.44.9

The value of total building approved rose 4.9% in December, in seasonally adjusted terms. The value of non-residential building rose 10.1%, having fallen 27.7% in November.

The value of total residential building approved rose in December, by 2.3%. The value of new residential building rose 1.4%, while the value of residential alterations and additions rose 8.1%. The value of residential alterations and additions reached a record high in December ($941.6m).

Data downloads

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Time series spreadsheets

Data files

Datacubes

Series ID Concordance

Data files
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Private residential alterations and additions, July 2016 - December 2020 - States and Territories

Data files
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I-note

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Small area datacubes

Data files

ABS.Stat datasets

Help for: ABS.Stat Datasets

Building Approvals by Greater Capital Cities Statistical Area (GCCSA) and above - Number and value of approvals, monthly, July 2001 onwards

Building Approvals by Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2) and above - Number and value of approvals, monthly, July 2011 onwards

Building Approvals by Local Government Area (LGA 2019) - Number and value of approvals, monthly, 2019/20

Building Approvals by Local Government Area (LGA 2020) - Number and value of approvals, monthly, 2020/21

Interactive map

To view the interactive map, click here.

Note that the interactive map will be offline soon after this publication release and will be refreshed with the current month's data within 24 hours.

How to use

Notes

Classification update

An update to the ABS' Functional Classification of Buildings (FCB) was published on 21 January 2021. The updated classification will be adopted in the next release (January 2021) of Building Approvals. There will be no impact on headline series, such as the number of houses, other residential dwellings or total dwellings approved.

The changes will affect the series identifiers in the following time series spreadsheets: 10 to 29 and 42 to 77 inclusive. A concordance from the new to old series identifiers is provided in the Data downloads section. 

The updated classification splits "Flats, units or apartments - In a block of four or more storeys" into two categories: "Apartments - In a four to eight storey block" and "Apartments - In a nine or more storey block". Data for the "four or more storeys" category will continue to be reported in the time series spreadsheets. Data will be available for the two new categories from the July 2016 month onwards. In addition to the time series spreadsheets, these categories will be included in the small-area CSV files and ABS.Stat. 

Data notes

This publication provides the number of dwelling units and value of buildings approved released in Building Approvals, Australia on 3 February 2021.

Small area data cubes and CSV files will be made available in an “Additional Information” release five business days after the main publication. These will be for Statistical Area Level 2 and Local Government Areas. Release dates are published under the “Forthcoming Issues” section of the publication and in ABS Release Advice.

A number of time series spreadsheets contain ‘np’ (not available for publication) annotations. This is due to confidential data being contained in these series.

Suspension of trend series

The trend series attempts to measure underlying behaviour in building approval activity. In the short term, this measurement will be significantly affected by changes to regular patterns in approval activity during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, as potential home builders face on-going uncertainty. If the trend estimates in this publication were to be calculated without fully accounting for this irregular event, they would likely provide a misleading view of underlying approval activity.

The Building Approvals monthly trend series have therefore been suspended starting from May 2020, while the quarterly series have been suspended from the June 2020 quarter. The trend series will be reinstated when more certainty emerges in the underlying trend.

Update to seasonal adjustment methods

Building Approvals uses the concurrent seasonal adjustment method, meaning that seasonal factors are re-estimated each time a new data point becomes available. If not appropriately accounted for, unusual real-world events, such as COVID-19, can distort estimates calculated using this method. From May 2020, seasonal factors are being calculated using data up to and including April 2020, then projected from May 2020 onwards. This approach, known as the forward factor method, ensures that the seasonal factors are not distorted by COVID-19 impacts. 

Revisions this month

In this release, revisions are provided for the time period from July 2019 to November 2020. Further information about potential sources of revisions can be found in the feature article released with the January 2016 Building Approvals publication - "Revisions to Building Approval Statistics".

Revisions to the total number of dwelling units approved in this issue are:

Dwellings 2019-202020-21
NSW 34 154
Vic.   3 142
Qld-15 447
SA-15    5
WA   -    1
Tas.   -    -
NT   -    -
ACT   -   24
Total   7 773

Inquiries

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070. The ABS Privacy Policy outlines how the ABS will handle any personal information that you provide to us.

History of changes

10/02/2021 - As advertised in the main release of this publication on 3 February 2021, this additional information release contains the small area Excel datacubes and CSV files for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 financial years. 

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 8731.0.

Article archive

Previous feature articles

Methodology

Building Approvals, Australia methodology, December 2020

Media releases