Demand for workers across the housing construction sector in Australia will remain at red-hot levels until at least the end of 2023, a leading housing industry economist has declared.

In its latest monthly edition of its New Home Sales Report based on a survey of the nation’s largest home volume home builders in the five largest states – Housing Industry Association said the seasonally adjusted volume of new homes which were sold throughout Australia edged back 1.2 percent during April.

But sales remain at extremely high levels compared with historic standards (refer chart).

This means that the pace at which new projects and work are coming into the pipeline and market in the detached home building segment remains elevated.

This suggests that activity in Australia’s booming detached house construction market is likely to continue for some time.

HIA Economist Tom Devitt said the forward pipeline of detached home projects means that demand for workers in residential construction is likely to remain strong until at least the end of 2023.

“Despite the fall in April, new home sales in the first few months of 2022 remain exceptionally strong and marginally higher than in the same period last year,” Devitt said.

“The strong demand for new homes indicates the depth of the shortage of housing and the significant change in household formation rates, due to the pandemic.

“These strong sales are ensuring that the volume of home building and demand for skilled workers will remain strong at least until the end of 2023.

The latest data comes amid a massive shortage of workers in construction and especially in the detached home building segment of the market.

This has seen the number of unfilled roles for various types of trades, machinery/equipment operators and labouring roles reach levels which have never been seen previously.

With high levels of demand now locked in on account of the forward pipeline of work, the shortage of labour is unlikely to abate anytime soon.

In terms of states, HIA says Western Australia and Victoria were the only states that saw an increase in new home sales in the month of April, up by 8.8 per cent and 4.0 per cent respectively. South Australia saw a decline of 2.0 per cent, followed by Queensland (-9.0 per cent) and New South Wales (-9.4 per cent).

For the last three months, compared to the same quarter last year, sales in New South Wales were up by 11.1 per cent. This was followed by declines in Victoria (-4.2 per cent), Queensland (-14.3 per cent), Western Australia (-15.9 per cent) and South Australia (-42.8 per cent).

 

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