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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 2022
Released
31/03/2022
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Key statistics

  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved rose 43.5%.
  • Private sector houses rose 16.5%, while private sector dwellings excluding houses rose 78.3%. 
  • The value of non-residential building approved rose 132.0%. 

Dwellings approved

February key figures, seasonally adjusted
 Feb-22Monthly changeYearly change
 no.%%
Total dwelling units approved18,67543.5-7.8
Private sector houses10,24016.5-27.4
Private sector dwellings excluding houses7,18378.325.5

The number of dwellings approved in Australia rose 43.5% in February, in seasonally adjusted terms. This follows a 27.1% fall in January.

Private sector house approvals rose 16.5% in February, to 10,240, following a 16.3% decline in January. Private sector dwellings excluding houses rose 78.3%, following a 43.3% fall in January.

Dwellings approved, states and territories, seasonally adjusted
 Private sector housesPrivate sector housesTotal dwelling unit approvalsTotal dwelling unit approvals
no.Monthly % changeno.Monthly % change
New South Wales2,65327.25,54348.8
Victoria3,24620.17,13091.0
Queensland1,9976.42,719-14.6
South Australia7537.61,12735.9
Western Australia1,18911.51,2308.0
Tasmanianana28512.2
Northern Territorynananana
Australian Capital Territorynananana
Australia10,24016.518,67543.5

 

By state, the number of dwelling approvals rose in Victoria (91.0%), New South Wales (48.8%), South Australia (35.9%), Tasmania (12.2%), and Western Australia (8.0%). Queensland was the only state to fall (-14.6%) in February, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Approvals for private sector houses rose in all mainland states: New South Wales (27.2%), Victoria (20.1%), Western Australia (11.5%), South Australia (7.6%) and Queensland (6.4%), in seasonally adjusted terms.

Value of building approved

Value of building approved, by building type, seasonally adjusted
 $mMonthly % change
New residential building7,264.647.7
Alterations and additions to residential building918.8-6.4
Total residential building8,183.538.7
Non-residential building6,100.6132.0
Total building14,284.167.5

 

The value of total building approved rose 67.5% in February, in seasonally adjusted terms. The increase was driven by a rise in the value of non-residential building (132.0%), following a 37.2% fall in January. The large increase in value of non-residential building was driven by a large number of public approvals in February, with 14 projects over $30m approved.

The value of total residential building rose 38.7%, comprised of a 47.7% increase in the value of new residential building, and a 6.4% fall in alterations and additions.

Interactive map

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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.

How to use

Data downloads

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Time series spreadsheets

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Small area datacubes

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Data Explorer datasets

Caution: Data in the Data Explorer is currently released after the 11:30am release on the ABS website. Please check the time period when using Data Explorer.

Help for: Data Explorer 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 2016 onwards

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

Building Approvals by Local Government Area (LGA 2021) - Number and value of approvals, monthly, 2021/22

 

GeoPackages

Data files

Data notes

This publication provides the number of dwelling units and value of buildings approved released in Building Approvals, Australia on 31 March 2022.

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 the ABS Release Calendar.

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

Revisions this month

In this release, revisions are provided for the time period from July 2020 to January 2022. 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 revised by State2020-212021-22
New South Wales16203
Victoria324
Queensland51-102
South Australia-1320
Western Australia--6
Tasmania--
Northern Territory--
Australian Capital Territory-8
Total57147

Enquiries

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Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 8731.0.

Post release changes

07/04/2022 - As advertised in the main release of this publication on 31 March 2022, this additional information release contains the small area Excel datacubes and CSV files for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years. 

Related information

Building Activity, Australia

Construction Work Done, Australia, Preliminary

Construction Activity: Chain Volume Measures, Australia

Functional Classification of Buildings

Lending indicators, Australia

Residential Property Price Indexes: Eight Capital Cities

Producer Price Indexes, Australia

Article archive

Previous feature articles

Methodology

Building Approvals, Australia methodology, February 2022

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