How long you can expect to wait for a new house, apartment, townhouse to be built

The average times Victorians are being forced to wait to move into a new home, apartment or townhouse after getting planning have been revealed. And it’s depressing.

Victorians looking to build an apartment can expect to wait more than two years before they can actually move in, with the average planning approval to completion time blowing out in the state to a shocking 29.49 months.

Those building new townhouses will be forced wait more than 15 months before they can shift in furniture, while Victorians building freestanding homes will typically wait almost 11 months.

Construction times for all three types of homes have blown out massively in the years since 2009-2010, with new apartments taking more than 40 per cent longer to build, townhouses nearly 28 per cent and freestanding homes nearly 25 per cent longer.

New homes and townhouses building times have blown out even in the last year, at 17 per cent and more than 10 per cent longer respectively.

Victorians can expect to wait more than 15 months for a townhouse to be built. Picture: Supplied

Master Builders Australia chief Denita Wawn said the delivery of new homes had “been obstructed by the combination of labour shortages, broken supply chains and other Covid restrictions”.

“This is on top of the already formidable set of impediments in the form of planning delays, insufficient land release and red tape,” she said.

“These unnecessary delays to construction ultimately drive up the cost of building which has already faced inflationary challenges with building product prices and a tight labour market.

“Since the pandemic, building product prices have increased 33 per cent and 4.4 per cent in the last 12 months.

“While we are seeing a stabilisation of some building product prices primarily around steel, some products such as cement continue to escalate,” Ms Wawn said.

Master Builders’ forecasts 2023-24 year will see home starts decline by 2.1 per cent.

“With a housing target of 1.2 million homes in five years, to realistically achieve this goal, we need to reduce the time it takes to build,” Ms Wawn said.

To meet growth projections and replace workers leaving the industry about 486,000 workers were needed nationally.