Building Approvals, Australia

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Provides the number of dwelling units and value of buildings approved

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Reference period
January 2022
Released
3/03/2022
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Key statistics

  • The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved fell 27.9%.
  • Private sector houses fell 17.5%, while private sector dwellings excluding houses declined 43.6%. 
  • The value of non-residential building approved fell 36.8%. 

Dwellings approved

January key figures, seasonally adjusted
 Jan-22Monthly changeYearly change
 no.%%
Total dwelling units approved12,916-27.9-24.1
Private sector houses8,712-17.5-29.0
Private sector dwellings excluding houses4,007-43.6-8.5

The number of dwellings approved in Australia fell 27.9% in January, in seasonally adjusted terms. This follows a 9.8% rise in December.

Private sector house approvals fell 17.5% in January, to 8,712, following a 0.3% decline in December. Private sector dwellings excluding houses fell 43.6%, following a 29.6% rise in December.

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 Wales2,046-14.03,690-25.9
Victoria2,701-18.63,733-35.5
Queensland1,841-15.73,1170.5
South Australia695-19.9823-29.2
Western Australia1,074-16.51,147-19.9
Tasmanianana255-13.9
Northern Territorynananana
Australian Capital Territorynananana
Australia8,712-17.512,916-27.9

 

By state, the number of dwelling approvals fell in Victoria (-35.5%), South Australia (-29.2%), New South Wales (-25.9%), Western Australia (-19.9%) and Tasmania (-13.9%). Dwelling approvals rose slightly in Queensland (0.5%), in seasonally adjusted terms.

Approvals for private sector houses fell in all mainland states: South Australia (-19.9%), Victoria (-18.6%), Western Australia (-16.5%), Queensland (-15.7%), and New South Wales (-14.0%), in seasonally adjusted terms.

Value of building approved

Value of building approved, by building type, seasonally adjusted
 $mMonthly % change
New residential building4892.5-24.9
Alterations and additions to residential building975.3-10.3
Total residential building5867.8-22.8
Non-residential building2626.3-36.8
Total building8494.1-27.7

 

The value of total building approved fell 27.7% in January, in seasonally adjusted terms. The decrease was driven by a fall in the value of non-residential building approved (-36.8%), following a 15.0% decline in December.

The value of total residential building fell 22.8%, comprised of an 24.9% decline in the value of new residential building, and a 10.3% fall in the value of alterations and additions.

Interactive map

To view the interactive map, click here.

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

Download all (1.46 MB)

Small area datacubes

Data files

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 3 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.

Geography classification update

This publication includes the adoption of the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3 boundaries. The ASGS is a geographic classification of Australia into a hierarchy of statistical areas. Adopting the Edition 3 ASGS boundaries will result in minor changes to the SA2 level data, as is available in either 'Small area datacubes' or 'Data Explorer'. In order to provide a consistent time series for building approvals data, the Edition 3 SA2 boundaries have been implemented on data going back to July 2016. These new boundaries will be in place until the next update to ASGS in five years time. 

Revisions this month

In this release, revisions are provided for the time period from July 2016 to December 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 revised by State2016-17 to 2019-202020-212021-22
New South Wales50825145
Victoria42193
Queensland-225403
South Australia12-37
Western Australia16-33-16
Tasmania511147
Northern Territory-1--
Australian Capital Territory--8
Total62626687

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

10/03/2022 - As advertised in the main release of this publication on 3 March 2022, this additional information release contains the small area Excel datacubes for the current and previous financial year, along with CSV files for the 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 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, January 2022

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