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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
March 2022
Released
5/05/2022
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Key statistics

  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved fell 18.5%.
  • Private sector houses fell 3.0%, while private sector dwellings excluding houses fell 29.9%.
  • The value of non-residential building approved fell 0.8%. 

Dwellings approved

March key figures, seasonally adjusted
 Mar-22Monthly changeYearly change
no.%%
Total dwelling units approved15,183-18.5-35.6
Private sector houses9,932-3.0-32.2
Private sector dwellings excluding houses5,004-29.9-41.0

The number of dwellings approved in Australia fell 18.5% in March, in seasonally adjusted terms. This follows a 42.0% rise in February.

Private sector house approvals fell 3.0% in March, to 9,932, following a 14.6% rise in February. Private sector dwellings excluding houses fell 29.9%, following a 79.1% rise in February.

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 Wales2,455-7.54,211-23.9
Victoria3,064-5.04,650-34.6
Queensland2,1105.83,01912.4
South Australia740-2.2865-23.5
Western Australia1,2030.31,3085.1
Tasmanianana208-27.3
Northern Territorynananana
Australian Capital Territorynananana
Australia9,932-3.015,183-18.5

 

By state, the number of dwelling approvals fell in Victoria (-34.6%), Tasmania (-27.3%), New South Wales (-23.9%) and South Australia (-23.5%). Queensland (12.4%) and Western Australia (5.1%) rose in March, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Approvals for private sector houses fell in New South Wales (-7.5%), Victoria (-5.0%), and South Australia (-2.2%). Queensland (5.8%) and Western Australia (0.3%) rose, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Value of building approved

Value of building approved, by building type, seasonally adjusted
 $mMonthly % change
New residential building5,762.8-20.7
Alterations and additions to residential building930.50.0
Total residential building6,693.4-18.3
Non-residential building6,158.8-0.8
Total building1,2852.2-10.8

 

The value of total building approved fell 10.8% in March, in seasonally adjusted terms. The decrease was driven by a fall in the value of total residential building (-18.3%), following a 37.7% rise in February. The decrease in value of total residential building in March was driven by a fall in the value of new residential building (-20.7%). Alterations and additions remained flat.

The value of non-residential building fell 0.8% in March, following a 130.1% rise in February.

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

Data files

I-note

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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 5 May 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 February 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 Wales24115
Victoria45810
Queensland133
South Australia-6-12
Western Australia-157
Tasmania-1
Northern Territory--
Australian Capital Territory-3
Total477307

Enquiries

For enquiries about these and related statistics, contact the Customer Assistance Service via the ABS website Contact Us page. The ABS Privacy Policy outlines how the ABS will handle any personal information that you provide to us.

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 8731.0.

Post release changes

12/05/2022 - As advertised in the main release of this publication on May 5 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

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Methodology

Building Approvals, Australia methodology, March 2022

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