Flood repairs likely to take months

Keryn Amon

Flood repairs from the deluge which struck in the third week of June are likely to continue for months, a local builder says.

"A lot of people still don't know what exactly they're going to do or when they're going to be able to get it done," DML Construction owner Keryn Amon said.

"We've had a bit of an influx of flood relief stuff already. It's going to be ongoing ... months rather than weeks."

The number of building consents issued in Wanganui was fairly consistent leading up to the month of the floods, according to new data.

Statistics New Zealand records show five consents were issued for new builds in June, which was one up on June 2014 but one less than in May.

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The value of buildings consented for Manawatu and Wanganui was $30 million - up from $23 million in June last year.

Mr Amon believed there was good interest in new builds, including builds at the higher end of the market.

"We've traditionally focused on commercial projects, but have recently got into doing more residential builds as we found there was a gap in higher end stuff.

"We're trying to get a consent for a new project at the moment and we've got a new subdivision, which has had interest from locals and out-of-towners."

Nationally, 12,057 new dwellings - worth almost $4 billion - were consented in the past six months.

"The new building consent figures show the total floor area for the dwellings consented was 221 hectares," Statistics New Zealand business indicators manager Clara Eatherley said.

"This means that enough new homes were consented in the first half of 2015 to cover an area twice the size of Wellington Airport."

In June, 2042 new dwellings were consented - 40 more than in June 2014. In seasonally adjusted terms, June consents were down 4.1 per cent on May, however.