This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
DESPITE a combined strong effort from New South Wales and Victoria, new home sales amongst Australia's top 100 builders fell 5.3% in February, according to the HIA.
According to the HIA, new home sales rose 17.9% in NSW and Victoria – but that was offset by weaker results in Queensland and Western Australia.
Nationwide, detached house sales fell by 5% and multi-unit sales were down by 7.5%.
HIA’s chief economist Harley Dale in QLD and WA, there was a relatively big lift to sales in January thanks to a strong boost from the resource rich states.
“However, as suspected this situation has proven to be unsustainable,” he added.
NSW was the strongest market in February, new home sales rose 12.1% compared to a fall of 11.9% in January.
HIA’s executive director of NSW Graham Wolfe said over the three months to February 2008 the level of sales in NSW increased by 16% to be 28% higher compared to the three months to February last year.
“This recovery is exaggerated by what were very weak levels of sales in late 2006 and early 2007,” Wolfe said. “Neverthless, with the current turbulent and uncertain economic times we face it is encouraging to see new home sales levels in better shape than 12 months ago,” Wolfe concluded.
Meanwhile, QLD recorded a drop of 10% in the sale of new homes following an increase of 26.2% in January.
QLD executive director Warwick Temby said that the pull-back in February only partially unwound a very strong start to the year for sales in Queensland.
“We suspected that the big January boost was unsustainable and it was, but the overall level of sales remains healthy. Over the three months to February this year the level of sales was still a little higher than over the same period to February last year so we’re in good shape.
“At least we are approaching this challenging time with sales levels holding up quite well.” Temby added.
Dale said for Australia as a whole there is no sign of any upward momentum in new home sales, or building approvals, while housing finance for new home building has been trending down for some time.
“This is little wonder given that over the space of only seven months through to March this year we saw a 1.25 percentage point hit to an average variable mortgage rate.
“Leading indicators of new home building are likely to be flat at best through the remainder of 2007/08,” Dale concluded.
Australian Property Journal
