Melbourne’s Manhattan golden age

Wednesday 1 July 2015

Yesterday’s dwelling approvals data for May, released by the the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), revealed an ongoing boom in unit & apartment construction, which hit its highest ever level on a rolling annual basis (see next chart).

Breaking down the data, you can see that units & apartments accounted for a record 47% of total dwelling commencements in the year to May 2015, up from just over 30% in the years leading up to the Global Financial Crisis (see next chart).

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About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.