National house-building consent applications fall 29%: Cyclone Gabrielle partly blamed

New houses going up in Auckland's Long Bay. Photo / Jason Oxenham

After setting records last year, building consents fell 29 per cent last month compared to a year ago, and Cyclone Gabrielle was partly blamed.

Michael Heslop, construction and property manager at Stats NZ, said only 2972 new applications were made for housing consents last month.

That was well down on the 4195 homes consented last February.

“The decrease in the number of homes consented in February 2023 is large when compared with February 2022, which had the highest number of homes consented for any February month on record,” Heslop said.

“Cyclone Gabrielle may have caused some disruption. However, the monthly fall in homes consented was seen across nearly all regions, including those not directly affected by the cyclone,” he said.

But on an annualised basis, the drop wasn’t as sharp.

There were 48,257 new homes consented in the year to February 2023, down 3.3 per cent compared with the year to last February.

The number of homes consented annually to February this year is at a similar level to what it was two years ago in February 2021, Heslop noted.

All regions except the Bay of Plenty and Marlborough had fewer new house consents applied for last month.

Bad weather might hit new applications this year as well.

Damage from Cyclone Gabrielle at Redcliffe Bridge near Taradale, Hawke's Bay. Photo / Paul Taylor

“The adverse weather events in early 2023 may impact home consenting numbers in affected regions in the coming months.”

Some emergency repairs do not require a building consent so would not be included in future building consent issued data, Stats NZ added.

In some of the most populous regions, new homes consented were 128 in Otago, down 47 per cent compared to last February, 517 in Canterbury, down 46 per cent, 202 in Wellington, down 35 per cent, and 1289 in Auckland, down 21 per cent.

Nationwide, 27,872 multi-unit homes were consented in the year to February, up 15 per cent annually.

The number of standalone houses consented fell 20 per cent to 20,385 during the same period.

Multi-unit homes are townhouses, apartments, retirement village units and flats.

The Herald reported last year how house building consents continued to smash records, with numbers up 24 per cent in the year to March 2022. Then, they hit 50,858 residential units for the first time.

Stats NZ said then that never before had New Zealand exceeded 50,000 consents issued in a year - and most consents result in new buildings.

Heslop cited apartment numbers in particular for driving up activity levels. There were 25,475 multi-unit homes consented in the year to March, up 40 per cent annually, he said.

Tamba Carleton, CBRE associate research director, said this week Auckland’s CBD now had 21,253 apartments but fringe and suburban areas had 20,604 and would soon eclipse the inner-city areas.

In five weeks’ time, there will be more units outside the CBD than in it.

“Auckland’s move towards being a denser, more apartment-friendly city is progressing. The total number of fringe and suburban apartments is set to overtake those in the CBD,” she said today.

Northcote had the highest number of new units nearing completion: 214 apartments.

Shane Brealey of NZ Living this month unveiled his new $90 million project on Greenslade Cres, Northcote, where he said most places sold within three minutes in 2021, partly because they were only $500,000-$600,000 each in a city where the median was more than $1m.

Carleton said NZ Living Greenslade Cres was one of the projects included in the 872 units rising in suburban areas.