By Martin North, cross-posted from the Digital Finance Analytics Blog:
The HIA New Home Sales Report, a survey of Australia’s largest volume builders, showed a very modest decline of 0.4%. HIA say key leading indicators of home building, including HIA New Home Sales, suggest little prospect for further growth in new home construction in 2015/16.
Detached house sales increased by 0.7 per cent in July this year. The annual peak for detached house sales has passed. Over the three months to July this year detached house sales fell by 2.8 per cent to be 3.4 per cent lower when compared to the three months to July 2014. ‘Multi-unit’ sales peaked in May this year and fell by 4.2 per cent in July following a decline of 2.9 per cent in June. Over the three months to July this year multi-unit sales increased by 8.3 per cent, but it was the strength of the May result that drove the quarterly outcome.
In the month of July 2015 detached house sales increased by 4.2 per cent in New South Wales. Detached house sales fell by 2.3 per cent in Victoria and by 4.9 per cent in Western Australia. Sales were close to flat for the month in Queensland (-0.6 per cent) and South Australia (-0.2 per cent).
