Pressure eases on new home buyers

The tide could be turning on the cost of building homes as new data from Master Builders Australia indicates that cost of purchasing a new home decelerated sharply with an increase of just 1.7 per cent during the December 2022 quarter.

Earlier in the year, new home purchase costs had grown at their fastest pace on record due to increased costs of labour and materials.

Master Builders scting CEO Shaun Schmitke said that builders and new homeowners are breathing a sigh of relief with signs that home building inflationary pressures are easing.

“After a period of high inflation off the back crippling labour shortages and high material costs, we are starting to see some easing in the cost of building a home,” he said.

“As state and Federal governments continue to roll out incentives to assist housing affordability, we expect this will help reduce out-of-pocket expenses for Australians and further slow the rate of inflation for new dwellings.

“Master Builders urges the Housing Supply and Affordability Council to look closely around continuity and duplication of shared equity, loans and grant schemes in order to maintain a steady pipeline of housing projects and reduce the cost Australians pay for a home.”

Overall, annual inflation rose to 7.8 per cent during the December quarter, the highest since 1990.

However, this was a little lower than anticipated by the RBA with inflation now in the process of easing and this is likely to continue over the course of 2023 according to MBA.

Mr Schmitke said that while we are seeing a slowing in demand for new homes, there’s recognition the Reserve Bank has a difficult challenge to strike the right balance when curbing inflation.

“It is worth pointing out that interest rate increases are adding to the cost pressures in some parts of the economy,” he said.

“Rental inflation is now at its highest in over a decade as landlords are forced to pass higher mortgage repayments onto tenants.

“Non-discretionary costs such as electricity, labour, land supply and material costs are continuing to have a negative impact on the sector.”

Industry peak bodies have repeatedly urged that the cost of doing business in the building and construction industry needs to be addressed with bottlenecks in our migration system, unnecessary regulatory burdens on builders and a lack of land supply all contributing to price increases.