Even as the market slowed, Australia’s largest home building companies have increased their activity and revenues over the past year as they edged out smaller rivals and took a larger market share, the latest report shows.

Releasing its HIA-COLOURBOND® steel Housing 100 report for 2019/20, Housing Industry Association (HIA) has listed the nation’s 100 largest home building companies by number of dwellings which were commenced during the financial year.

The report revealed that Metricon Homes remains the nation’s largest home builder, increasing its number of starts from 4,303 in 2018/19 to 4,473 in 2019/20.

This is followed by Queensland multi-unit builder Hutchies, multi-unit builder Multiplex, Perth based detached home builder ABN Group and Newcastle based detached home builder MJH Group (see chart).

The report also shows that larger builders have grown their businesses and have taken a greater share of the home building market.

Over the past financial year, the nation’s 100 largest builders increased their dwelling commencement numbers from 67,694 in 2018/19 to 69,459 in 2019/20 and have grown their revenue from $21.291 billion to $24.097 billion.

This comes despite the overall number of starts having contracted from more than 220,000 in 2018/19 to an estimated 169,000 in 2019/20 (HIA forecast).

Larger builders have also increased their market share.

In 2018/19, the nation’s largest 100 builders accounted for 35 percent of the overall housing market by dwelling starts.

In 2019/20, this number increased to 40 percent.

This is consistent with previous slowdowns in which larger builders have been more agile and have been able to gain market share in a contracting market.

It should be noted that the report predates the impact of both COVID-19 and the HomeBuilder Grant as home building projects which commenced on or before the end of the financial year were initiated prior to the COVID outbreak in March.

Rather, the COVID effect will be seen in 2020/21 and 2021/22 – the latter in which HIA expects commencement numbers to bottom out at around 133,000.

HIA Chief Economist Tim Reardon said participants on the list had remained stable throughout almost three decades of data.

“In the 28 years that HIA has been collecting this data, through the myriad of economic shocks, the participants on the list have remained remarkably stable,” Reardon said.

“Of the 20 largest detached home builders in 1993, all but two remain on the Housing 100 list today. Some of these businesses have merged or rebranded, and many have slid down the list over the years, but through all of the economic changes of the past 30 years, this list of hard working, small privately owned businesses have continued to build homes for Australians.”

Highlights of the Housing 100 list in 2019/20:

• Metricon Homes ranked as Australia’s largest home builder overall by volume of construction starts in 2019/20 with 4,4534 starts. This is followed by Hutchies (3,820 starts), Multiplex (3,486 starts, ABN Group (3,247 starts) and MJH Group (2,761 starts)
• Metricon was also the largest detached home builder with 4,420 detached home starts.
• Creation Homes Group was the largest semi-detached home builder with 783 semi-detached starts.
• Multiplex was the largest multi-storey unit builder with 3,486 starts.
• Multiplex was also the biggest mover, increasing starts by 64 percent
• All up, Housing 100 builders broke ground on 69,459 homes in 2019/20, up from 67,694 in 2019.
• Housing 100 builders also increased their revenue by 13.2 percent to reach $24.097 billion.
• The number of starts required to make the Top 100 increased from 100 to 108.