Against all expectations, housing consents in June leapt to their highest level for any month in 30 years.
Wednesday, August 4th 2004, 4:56PM
by The Landlord
The 3,447 consents issued compared with 2,544 in May and were 44.3% higher than the 2,389 consents issued in June last year.
In seasonally adjusted terms, consents jumped 32.4% following a 0.9% rise in May - that was revised from the previously published 0.5% decline.
The figures appear to be an anomaly and Statistics New Zealand says the trend, excluding apartments, has still been declining since October last year.
Mark Venning at Statistics New Zealand says two factors explain some of the increase: some territorial authorities have raised their prices from July 1 so there was a rush in June to get applications in before that. And apartment approvals jumped from 306 in May to 977 in June, 690 of them in Auckland.
That last number is particularly surprising since most commentators highlight the market for Auckland apartments as being particularly at risk in a downturn. Auckland consents accounted for 39% of the June total.
