Ninety-seven percent of new dwelling consents lead to a completed home, experimental figures released by Stats NZ show.
Stats NZ produces monthly building consent figures, quarterly estimates of building work undertaken, and quarterly estimates of how many homes there are in New Zealand.
The missing piece of the puzzle is just how many consents are completed, when they are completed, and where in New Zealand they are.
To answer this, Stats NZ produced some new experimental statistics.
The test figures show that while almost all building consents turn into homes over time, it can take almost a year from the time a consent is issued before the house-warming starts.
Experimental dwelling estimates include initial estimates of how many homes have been completed in the 67 territorial authority areas and what the supply of housing is in each location.
The estimates suggest that at a national level:
- about 97 per cent of dwelling consents lead to a home being finished, though it dropped to about 93 per cent during the 2008 global financial crisis
- it currently takes about 10 months for a new home to be built after a dwelling consent is issued – the lag was about six months in 1998, and 12 months in 2008
- about 28,000 new dwellings were completed in the year ended March 2017, while just under 31,000 dwellings were consented during the same period
- about 1.84 million private dwellings were available in New Zealand at March 2017, comparable to the official Dwelling and Household estimates.
“While consents show an intention to build and are a good indicator of construction, we want to know how many are actually being built across New Zealand,” Accommodation and Construction Indicators Manager Melissa McKenzie says.
At this stage, the new estimates are simply a test and Stats NZ is seeking feedback to see if people find the figures useful and how they could be improved.
