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New home sales in October are the lowest they have been in two years, new figures released by an industry association show.
The Housing Industry Association’s monthly survey of Australia’s largest home builders reveals that new home sales in October fell to the lowest levels since 2014.
“HIA new home sales fell by some 8.5 per cent during October 2016, the lowest volume of sales since July 2014,” HIA senior economist Shane Garrett said.
“Sales on both sides of the market saw sizeable reductions during October. Detached house sales were down by 8.2 per cent during the month, while multi-unit sales fell by 9.2 per cent.”
Prior to this, Australia had been in its longest new home building upturn.
“October’s new home sales results are consistent with HIA’s latest forecasts for new home building starts which foresee a reasonably marked reduction in activity over the next couple of years. Even so, activity is projected to fall to a low point of around 172,000 new dwellings starts during 2018-19, about the same as the average of the past decade,” Mr Garrett said.
The report covers five states and saw sales fall in three of them – Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia.
Victoria saw the biggest reduction with a loss of 20.4 per cent in the sales of detached houses. Western Australia recorded a loss of 5.6 per cent and New South Wales reported a 2.8 per cent loss.
Queensland and South Australia reported slight increases, 4.5 per cent and 0.8 per cent respectively.
The findings match the industry’s concerns about falling transactions, with many real estate groups turning to less traditional ways to boost income in their offices.
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