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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
November 2021
Released
10/01/2022
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Key statistics

  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved rose 3.6% in November.
  • Private sector houses rose 1.4%, while private sector dwellings excluding houses increased 9.7%. 
  • The value of non-residential building approved rose 28.3%. 

Dwellings approved

November key figures, seasonally adjusted
 Nov-21Monthly changeYearly change
 no.%%
Total dwelling units approved16,4483.6-7.7
Private sector houses10,8921.4-8.1
Private sector dwellings excluding houses5,3159.7-5.5

The number of dwellings approved in Australia rose 3.6% in November, in seasonally adjusted terms. This follows a 13.6% decline in October.

Private sector house approvals rose 1.4% in November, to 10,892, following a 3.5% rise in October. Private sector dwellings excluding houses rose 9.7%, following a 37.9% fall in October.

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 Wales25185.43526-18.4
Victoria3588-0.858518.9
Queensland21987.4358120.0
South Australia9266.4115314.5
Western Australia1286-12.11574-1.1
Tasmanianana30040.8
Northern Territorynananana
Australian Capital Territorynananana
Australia108921.4164483.6

 

By state, the number of dwelling approvals rose in Tasmania (40.8 per cent), Queensland (20.0 per cent), South Australia (14.5 per cent) and Victoria (8.9 per cent). New South Wales (-18.4 per cent) and Western Australia (-1.1 per cent) fell, in seasonally adjusted terms

Approvals for private sector houses rose in Queensland (7.4 per cent), South Australia (6.4 per cent) and New South Wales (5.4 per cent). Falls were recorded in Western Australia (-12.1 per cent) and Victoria (-0.8 per cent),  in seasonally adjusted terms.

Value of building approved

Value of building approved, by building type, seasonally adjusted
 $mMonthly % change
New residential building5934.18.5
Alterations and additions to residential building973.2-0.8
Total residential building6907.37.1
Non-residential building4785.128.3
Total building11692.414.8

 

The value of total building approved rose 14.8 per cent in November, in seasonally adjusted terms. The increase was driven by a rise in the value of non-residential building (28.3 per cent), bouncing off a 20.0 per cent fall in October. 

The value of total residential building rose 7.1 per cent, comprised of a 8.5 per cent increase in the value of new residential building, and a 0.8 per cent fall in alterations and additions.

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Series ID concordance

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Private residential alterations and additions, July 2016 - November 2021 - States and Territories

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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 2011 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 10 January 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 October 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
Dwellings2020-212021-22
New South Wales2411
Victoria-226
Queensland66263
South Australia-15-3
Western Australia1522
Tasmania--
Northern Territory--
Australian Capital Territory--
Total88319

Inquiries

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Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 8731.0.

Post release changes

17/01/2022 - As advertised in the main release of this publication on 10 January 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, November 2021

Media releases