Metricon among HIA’s top Australian homebuilders

For the third consecutive year, Metricon Homes was revealed as the nation’s number one residential builder, at the launch of the HIA-Colorbond Steel Housing 100 Report in Melbourne last week.

Metricon Homes reported a total of 4,764 starts which was almost 400 more homes than last year – across Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

Of these starts, 3,876 were detached houses and 491 were semi-detached dwellings.

Metricon Director Peter Langfelder said that they are delighted to be ranked number one for the third consecutive year.

“It’s a testament to our national team, our passion for what we do, and the Australian families we do it for,” Mr Langfelder said.

“Our customers have and always will be our top priority, and it is a privilege that Australian home buyers continue to trust us with the most important purchase of their lives.

“It’s what drives us to continually improve our delivery of superior design, great quality construction and customer care.”

There are two distinct factors at play in this year’s Housing 100 Report.

Firstly, that the number of homes built by the top 100 builders in Australia has fallen for the first time in five years.

Secondly, that representation in all states has fallen, with the exception of builders from Victoria.

In terms of building activity in 2017/18 will be recorded as one of the strongest years on record.

We are expecting to see around 222,000 new homes commenced this last year, making it the second strongest year on record and the strongest year for detached house builders in 18 years.

Against this backdrop, it is surprising to see that the number of new homes built by the largest 100 home builders in the country did not increase.

In 2017/18 the number of new homes commenced by businesses listed in this Report was essentially unchanged (declining from 74,572 to 74,565).

The second factor affecting this outcome is that building businesses have shifted their focus away from simply increasing the number of homes they build, to instead focusing on improving the efficiency of their business in preparation for a slowdown across the market over the next couple of years.

The key highlights from this year’s Report for 2017/18 shows that the largest 100 residential builders:
• Increased revenue earned from home construction by 12.3 per cent to $25.39 billion in 2017/18.
• Reduced the number of new starts in the year by seven homes.
• Reduced their share of the new home building market from 34 per cent to 33 per cent.
• Accounted for 69 per cent of the detached homes built in Australia in 2017/18.

The number of starts required to make the list has also increased again, from 108 to 118, the highest entry hurdle on record.