Australia’s biggest home builders have seen significant declines in revenues and new home starts as the slowdown in new residential construction continues to bite, the latest research has found.

In its Housing 100 report prepared in conjunction with Colourbond Steel, the Housing Industry Association said the number of dwellings on which the nation’s 100 largest home building companies broke ground dropped from 74,565 in 2017/18 to 67,694 in 2018/19.

As well, revenue earned by the Housing 100 plummeted from previous sky-high levels of $25.389 million in 2017/18 to $21.291 million in 2018/19.

Amongst the top ten home builders, six broke ground on fewer homes and apartments last financial year compared with the previous financial year.

The slowdown in top 100 starts reflects a broader slowdown in the market for new home and apartment construction.

Over the year to March – the latest figures for which data is available – the overall number of dwelling commencements throughout Australia came in at 209,664.

Whilst this is high by historic standards, it is well down on the 225,569 starts recorded in the year to March 2018.

Indeed, the top 100 home builders actually grabbed a larger slice of the pie, taking their share of overall housing starts from 33 percent in 2017/18 to 35 percent in 2018/19.

This means that smaller builders are incurring a disproportionately larger share of the current downturn in home building.

In terms of rankings, Victorian home builder Metricon lead the pack in 2018/19 with 4,473 starts.

This was followed by Meriton Apartments (3,288 starts), ABN Group (2,954 starts), Dyldam Developments (2,722 starts) and Simonds Group (2,580 starts).

Metricon was also the largest detached house builder whilst Meriton was the largest multi-unit builder and Philip Usher Constructions Pty Ltd was the largest builder in semi-detached housing.

Perhaps surprisingly, the report shows that larger builders are most dominant in the detached home market.

All up, Housing 100 builders soaked up 57 percent of the market for detached dwellings – up from 54 percent in 2017/18 and 45 percent in 2016/17.

By contrast, the largest 100 home builders’ share of the semi-detached and multi-unit markets stood at just 16 percent and 27 percent respectively.