Victoria still tops the Housing Scorecard

THE strength of new home building in Victoria has once again kept it ahead of New South Wales as the number one state according to the Housing Industry Australia’s recently released Housing Scorecard.

HIA’s Acting Principal Economist Geordan Murray said that the HIA Housing Scorecard report presents analysis which ranks each of the eight states and territories based on the performance of twelve key residential building indicators.

“The buoyant housing markets in Melbourne and Sydney provided a particularly good environment for residential building over recent years, but we are now in a new phase of the housing cycle,” Mr Murray said.

“The housing market has softened considerably over the second half of 2018 and it will be increasingly challenging for these two states to continue outperforming. Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT all look capable of bumping the big two off the top of the table.”

Each of these states has a strength: Queensland with renovations, Tasmania with detached home building and the ACT with multi-unit building.

To ascend to the top of the table they will need to improve in other areas.

“In the wake of the resources investment boom the Northern Territory and Western Australia have both been experiencing very challenging conditions for residential building, these two jurisdictions rank seventh and eighth respectively,” Mr Murray said.

“While conditions in WA appear to have stabilised, albeit at very low levels the path to a recovery will a long one. There are signs of improving conditions in the broader state economy but these are yet to translate into any improvement in residential building,” Mr Murray concluded.