New home sales flat

From the HIA:

Private new home sales made a decent start to 2014, with first quarter data showing that what was a narrowly-driven recovery is now broadening, said the Housing Industry Association, the voice of Australia’s residential building industry.

“Following quite a strong result in February 2014, total new home sales managed to post another, albeit slim, increase of 0.2 per cent in March this year,” said HIA Economist, Diwa Hopkins. “The quarterly increase was therefore a decent rise of 5.8 per cent.”

“It’s encouraging to see that during the March 2014 quarter all of the surveyed states recorded increases in detached house sales.” commented Ms Hopkins.

“Strong results occurred in the areas where a new housing recovery is just gaining traction. In the key state of Queensland, detached house sales increased by 20.8 per cent in the March 2014 quarter. South Australia is also showing promising results, with sales up by 6.2 per cent,” explained Diwa Hopkins.

“The original drivers of the recovery, New South Wales and Western Australia, have maintained healthier levels of sales activity. This update shows there may be some potential for further growth in these states,” added Ms Hopkins.

In the March 2014 quarter, total seasonally adjusted new home sales increased by 5.8 per cent to be 23.4 per cent higher than 12 months previously. In the March 2014 quarter aggregate detached house sales increased by 7.0 per cent, while multi-unit sales eased by 0.2 per cent. Detached house sales increased in each of the surveyed states in the March 2014 quarter; by 20.2 per cent in Queensland, 6.6 per cent in WA, 6.2 per cent in SA, 5.6 per cent in Victoria, and 0.8 per cent in NSW.

We’re looking quite peaky to me. New home sales have been flat now in NSW and VIC for 12 months. The recent bounce has been driven by WA and QLD, which will both come under more pressure from the mining capex cliff in the second half.

Here’s the split between houses:

And units: