Stats NZ yesterday announced a new report on building activity in an effort to develop a better understanding of what the industry is actually building. For years we have been relying on building consent applications as a measurement of building activity, however it is well understood that a large percentage of consent approvals will never see a concrete pour or paint brush.

Recently I talked about how the capacity of our industry was capped at close to 30,000 dwellings built per year, this was backed up by the recent number of electrical connections recorded. This is nowhere near the 50,000 consents we are seeing approved currently.

So now Stats NZ will be reporting on quarterly national residential code completions. Initially this data is being labelled as experimental, and we should expect the data format to improve over time and from suggestions from industry.

So what do we know? The last quarter (Jan-Mar 2022) reported that 7,889 dwellings received code completion. For the last 12 months this totals 34,674, well up on previous years.

Now let's talk about how long it take us to build. The most recent data reports an average period of 519 days from building consent approved to code completion. Does this surprise you? It appears that on average it takes 64 days from final inspection to receiving the CCC. This data is over two years old so it will be important to see this updated to understand the impact of the increased activity on completion times, along with the labour shortages and industry wide supply chain impacts.

Well done Stats NZ in publishing this data. We encourage you to review the data and provide feedback to Stats NZ on what can be improved.

Images: Stats NZ

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