Housing consents highest in January for 29 years

By NZPA

Thursday 27th February 2003

New Zealand's residential housing market remains buoyant, with last month's consents for new dwelling units the most issued in January for 29 years.

Statistics New Zealand said today that Auckland led the charge, with the region accounting for 41 percent of the total number of new dwelling consents in January 2003.

The 819 consents issued in Auckland was 276 higher than in January 2002.

Wellington and Canterbury also showed significant increases, up 44 units at 169 and up 88 units at 294 respectively.

Consents were issued for a total of 1995 new dwelling units, the most for the month of January since 1974, Statistics NZ said.

The total value of consents was $578 million, with residential buildings contributing 70 percent of the total value of all buildings for the month, up from 58 percent of the total in January 2002.

The value of consents for all buildings for the year ended January 2003 was up 18 percent at $7.82 billion.

Fewer apartments were going to be built, with consents issued for 254 apartments last month compared with 642 in January 2002. However, on an annual basis the number of consents for apartments doubled to 5797, compared with the year ended January 2002.

The number of new dwelling consents has been increasing steadily since November 2000.

The only region to issue fewer consents for the month was Southland, down three to 12.

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