Growth in Tassie home building sector best in Australia

TASMANIA’S residential building industry has outperformed the nation, posting a huge increase in project commencements over the past financial year.

HIA boss Rick Sassin, left, and general manager of Clennett's Mitre10, Will Clennett following news that Tasmania’s residential building industry has outperformed the nation. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL.

TASMANIA’S residential building industry has outperformed the nation, posting a huge increase in project commencements over the past financial year.

The Housing Industry Association of Tasmania and Master Builders Tasmania welcomed the results as a sign of strength in the sector.

HIA Tas executive director Rick Sassin said he was thrilled with figures from the ABS that show a 29.4 per cent rise in dwelling commencements in 2017/2018.

He said Tasmania’s building sector bucked against the national trend where there had been a cooling off in new home building.

MBT executive director Matthew Pollock said as well as strong commencement figures, Tasmania was also recording growth in approvals.

“There is a strong transition from the drawing board to the worksite,” he said. “These results set us up for a great year ahead.”

Master Builders’ forecast for 2018/2019 was to “top 2600” home projects commenced, which would be 2 to 3 per cent growth

Mr Pollock said this would be a good result given that the value of the work done on residential projects in 2017-2018 was expected to grow by 11.5 per cent.

Master Builders Association Executive Director, Matthew Pollock said as well as strong commencement figures, Tasmania was also recording growth in approvals. Picture: NEWS CORP.

“Hopefully new commencements will continue to rise up until the end of the decade,” he said.

The strength of home building in Tasmania had been a major part of the State’s wider economic success, Mr Sassin said. However, he said this strength in the industry should not be taken for granted.

“All levels of governments must continue to support the housing industry and improve on the State’s housing and planning policies to enable ongoing, sustainable growth,” he said.

Mr Pollock said with affordability issues emerging in Tasmania alongside nation leading house sale prices, the building industry had responded positively.

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“A solution for these types of issue is supplying more homes, which we can see in this data,” he said.

“Generally, when house prices are growing at a much faster rate than other parts of the economy that is a signal that you have got demand growing faster than supply.

“When supply catches up, you tend to relive some of that pressure.”