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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
February 2021
Released
31/03/2021
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Key statistics

  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved rose 21.6% in February.
  • Private sector houses rose 15.1%, while private sector dwellings excluding houses increased 45.3%, in seasonally adjusted terms.
  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for the value of non-residential building approved rose 27.5%.

Dwellings approved

February key figures
  Feb-21Monthly changeYearly change
  no.%%
Seasonally adjusted
 Total dwelling units approved1942221.620.1
 Private sector houses1393915.157.5
 Private sector dwellings excluding houses508245.3-28.7

The number of dwellings approved in Australia rose 21.6% in February, in seasonally adjusted terms. This follows a 19.4% fall in January.

Private sector houses rose by 15.1% in February, reaching a new record high of 13,939 houses. Approvals for private sector dwellings excluding houses increased 45.3% in February, but remain 28.7% lower than February 2020.

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 Wales2,56714.54,55016.1
Victoria4,21311.15,69021.7
Queensland2,79225.43,93040.5
South Australia1,2384.01,395-3.4
Western Australia2,49816.72,91519.1
Tasmanianana45831.6
Northern Territorynananana
Australian Capital Territorynananana
Australia13,93915.119,42221.6

Total dwelling approvals rose in Queensland (40.5%), Tasmania (31.6%), Victoria (21.7%), Western Australia (19.1%) and New South Wales (16.1%). Dwelling approvals fell in South Australia (3.4%).

Approvals for private sector houses rose across all mainland states in February; Queensland (25.4%), Western Australia (16.7%), New South Wales (14.5%), Victoria (11.1%) and South Australia (4.0%).

Value of building approved

Value of building approved, by building type
Seasonally adjusted
$mMonthly % change
New residential building6,167.022.8
Alterations and additions to residential building973.211.1
Total residential building7,140.121.0
Non-residential building4,110.827.5
Total building11,251.023.3

The value of total building approved rose 23.3% in February, in seasonally adjusted terms. The value of non-residential building rose 27.5%, to the highest level in four months.

The value of total residential building approved rose in February, by 21.0%. This was comprised of a 22.8% increase in new residential building, and a 11.1% rise in residential alterations and additions, in seasonally adjusted terms.

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 - February 2021 - States and Territories

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Small area datacubes

Data files

I-note

ABS.Stat datasets

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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 (SA2 and above), July 2016 onwards - Number and value of approvals, monthly, July 2016 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

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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.

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Notes

Data notes

This publication provides the number of dwelling units and value of buildings approved released in Building Approvals, Australia on 31 March 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 Areas 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.

Classification update

An update to the ABS' Functional Classification of Buildings (FCB) was published on 21 January 2021.  The updated classification was adopted in the January 2021 release of Building Approvals. 

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 is 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. 

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 faced uncertainty initially, followed by the introduction of government stimulus measures. 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 January 2021. 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:

 Financial year
Dwellings 2019-202020-21
New South Wales215209
Victoria13-96
Queensland--50
South Australia66127
Western Australia-1
Tasmania-7
Northern Territory--
Australian Capital Territory--
Total294198

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

09/04/2021 - As advertised in the main release of this publication on 31 March 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.

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Methodology

Building Approvals, Australia methodology, February 2021

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