First year-on-year increase in monthly consents since 2022

The month of April 2024 saw more new homes consented when compared with the month of April 2023 due to the early timing of Easter

There were 2,926 new homes consented in the month of April 2024, an increase of 6% compared with the month of April 2023.

“April 2024 saw the first increase in the number of new homes consented – when compared with the same month in the previous year – since September 2022,” said Construction and Property Statistics manager Michael Heslop.

“This increase was partly due to the higher number of working days in the month of April 2024 compared with April 2023.”

More time to process

There were three more working days in April 2024 than in April 2023 (20 vs 17) as Good Friday fell in March, which gave building consent authorities extra time to process consents.

There were 1,354 stand-alone houses consented in April 2024, compared with 1,123 in April 2023 – an increase of 21%.

There were 1,572 multi-unit homes consented in April 2024 – a reduction of 4% when compared with April 2023, which saw 1,638 multi-unit homes consented.

Of the multi-unit homes, there were 1,296 townhouses, flats and units (-2.5%), 98 apartments (-38%) and 178 retirement village units (-45.3%).

Low year-on-year figures

Despite the increase in homes consented in the month of April 2024, there was a decrease in the number of new homes consented in the year ended April 2024 with 35,401 – a reduction of 23% compared with the year ended April 2023 (45,967).

Of the 35,401 new homes consented in the year ended April 2024, 20,004 were multi-unit homes and 15,397 were stand-alone homes.

The 20,004 consents for multi-unit homes represents a 25% reduction when compared to the 26,829 consented in the year ended April 2023. The number of stand-alone homes fell by 20% from 19,138 consented in the year ended April 2023.

Country-wide reduction

No regions consented more dwellings in the year ended April 2024 compared to the previous year.

The four regions with the most consents issued were Auckland (14,650; -27%), Canterbury (6,707; -16%), Waikato (3,256; -25%) and Wellington (2,391; -30%).

Consents down per 1,000 residents

In terms of dwellings consented per 1,000 residents, the figures for the year ended April 2024 declined compared with the year ended April 2023 (6.7 vs 8.9).

Three regions consented above national levels: Auckland (8.4), Otago (7.6) and Canterbury (10.1)

Non-residential building consents up

In the year ended April 2024, non-residential building consents totalled $9.6bn, down 1.2% from the year ended April 2023. The building types with the highest value were:

• Offices, administration and public transport buildings – $1.6bn (-10%).
• Hospitals, nursing homes, and health buildings – $1.5bn (+6.3%).
• Storage buildings – $1.5bn (-2.5%).