New home sales have bounced back particularly at the tail end of last year, as the latest survey commissioned by the Housing Industry Association (HIA) has revealed.
“New home sales hit a two-year low in October last year, but recovered well in November and December,” HIA chief economist Dr Harley Dale said.
“The late 2016 results were strong for the sales of ‘multi-units’, while detached house sales remained in reasonable shape.”
The update for the HIA’s monthly new home sales survey shows growth of 0.2 percent in total seasonally adjusted new home sales in last December.
This result is an improvement from the 6.1 percent recorded in November.
Multi-unit sales increased by 6.4 percent last December while detached house sales fell by 1.6 percent, within which there were substantial gains for New South Wales and Victoria.
“The strong finish to 2016 for new home sales admittedly follows a very weak month in October,” Dale said.
“Obviously it is better that new home sales bounced back rather than kept falling!”
“The overall profile for both HIA New Home Sales and ABS Building Approvals is consistent with the first stage of the down cycle in new home commencements being a mild one.
We expect this down cycle to begin in 2017.”
“As has been the case all cycle, new home sales (and building approvals) highlights the large differences in new home building conditions between the five mainland states.”
The report also added that new detached house sales fell by 2.3 percent in the December quarter, while the sale of multi-units grew by 3.2 percent.
Seasonally adjusted new detached house sales increased in two out of five mainland states in December, compared to four out of five states in last November.
Detached house sales increased in the month of December by 2.4 percent in New South Wales and by 5.8 per cent in Victoria.
The monthly fall in detached house sales was 9.1 percent in Queensland, 1.9 percent in South Australia, and 9.0 percent in Western Australia.
