Building Approvals in the North continue to soar

Posted on May 12, 2021 by Pete Faulkner - Building Approvals, Cairns, QLD, Townsville, Uncategorized

March data today from the ABS allows us to update our Conus Trend series for regional building approvals in Queensland and, once again, it shows approvals in the regions booming.

While approvals across the nation were up 47.4% y/y (s.a.) in Queensland the rate of growth was an even more impressive 82.2% y/y (see here for details). Today’s data shows that the increase is being largely driven by approvals rates in the Rest of Queensland (+104.5% y/y) rather than Greater Brisbane (+32.8% y/y). The Rest of QLD is at 13-year highs while Greater Brisbane is back at levels last seen less than 3 years ago.

In our own region Cairns continues to roar ahead; Trend approvals sat at 165 in March, up 176.9% from a year ago and at their highest level since May 2008. Townsville has also seen very strong growth, up 153.6% y/y (to 130), although this is ‘only’ a six-year high for the region. Other regional areas seeing solid growth are the Gold Coast (+138.2% y/y to 564), Wide Bay (up 130.1% y/y to 261) and the Darling Downs-Maranoa (+234.5% y/y to 48).

The full Conus data-set is available for download below. Please feel free to use this data but kindly acknowledge Conus when you do so.

Conus Regional Building Approvals Trend QLD – Mar 2021