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The pain in housing construction is becoming very palpable indeed with a huge miss in first quarter dwelling starts from the ABS today. Consensus for some reason expected a minor fall of -2.3%, as opposed to what was delivered, -12.6%:
The internals are all a bit depressing too:
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To give you some perspective, that total of 30,623 is below GFC low and beyond that the lowest since 2001.
At the state level, NSW collapsed to the lowest level on record, that is back before 1984. This may suggest some quirk in the data. But even so, VIC remains elevated and with approvals still falling in Melbourne and nationally, we’re going to set some more records to the downside yet.
About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
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