Strong building approvals data for the North

Last week saw solid Sept building approvals data at the national and state level (see here for details) with QLD recording a 7.1% y/y increase. Today’s release of the original regional data by the ABS allows us to update our Conus regional Trend data and this shows that, while Greater Brisbane did far better than the Rest of QLD (up 22.4% y/y in Greater Brisbane versus a fall of 10.1% y/y in the regions) the North of the state did particularly well.

In Cairns SA4 we saw Trend approvals at 114 which is their highest level since April 2018 and is an increase of 54.0% for the year. Townsville also progressed strongly up 38.4% to 69 approvals. Although these remain still well below the levels seen prior to the GFC they are nevertheless solid improvements and, particularly in Townsville, clear evidence of a recovery from historically low levels of approvals in recent years.

The under-performance of the Rest of Queensland relative to QLD as a whole was due to continued weak data from the Gold Coast where, despite a monthly pick-up in approvals, the year-on-year decline is still 47.9%.

At the Local Govt Area level we see Cairns Regional Council (incl Douglas Shire) at 81 (up 34.0% y/y), CCRC at 6 (up 19.1% y/y) and Tablelands Regional Council (incl Mareeba Shire) at 27 (up 75.3% y/y) which is very close to a decade-high. In Townsville City Council Trend approvals are at 63 (up 38.4% y/y).

The full data-set of Conus Regional Building Approvals for the QLD SA4 regions is available for download below. Please feel free to use this data but kindly acknowledge Conus when you do so.

Conus Regional Building Approvals QLD – Sept 2020

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