Private House Approvals MoM

It tracks the monthly percentage change in permits (official go-ahead to build) for private detached houses in Australia. Figures are seasonally adjusted and come from Building Approvals, Australia by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The series belongs to the Monthly Building Approvals collection (BAPS) as a census. A house is a detached building with a single dwelling for long-term residence with cooking and bathing fixtures.

Private means the intended owner at approval is the private sector, not the builder or funding source. The collection covers residential building valued at $10,000 or more and non-residential building valued at $50,000 or more. Published records extend back to July 1983.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases data monthly, 4 to 5 weeks after the first day of the named calendar month, at 11:30am Canberra time. Dates appear under Future releases and the ABS Release Calendar. Each issue carries commentary with original, seasonally adjusted and trend counts and values. Excel workbooks are in Downloads.

Small-area files follow 5 working days after the main publication, with Data Explorer after the website release. Seasonal factors are reviewed yearly, generally before May. Chain volume measures appear in January, April, July and October, while demolitions appear in March, June, September and December. Prior months may be revised for late records or corrections, with impacts on the main page, generally confined to the previous 12 to 18 months.

Related types frame private houses, though none carries a publisher weight.

• Private sector houses: detached single-dwelling approvals for private owners; the indicator itself counts freestanding houses.
• Private sector dwellings excluding houses: semidetached homes, terraces, townhouses, flats, units and apartments for private owners; it often moves differently from houses.
• Total dwelling units approved: houses plus other homes, private plus public; the headline aggregate framing private houses.
• Public-sector dwellings: homes for public owners such as housing authorities; a small remainder outside the indicator.
• Values: dollars approved for new houses, other homes, alterations and non-residential classes; they can diverge from unit counts.
• State and territory splits: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory; parts sum to total.

The January 2024 issue showed total dwellings down 1.0% to 12,850 as houses fell 9.9% to 7,461 while dwellings excluding houses rose 19.5% to 5,238. Those moves followed December falls of 10.1% for totals, 1.8% for houses and 24.9% for other dwellings. New residential value rose 19.4% to $7.14b and non-residential value rose 12.4% to $4.92b.

Houses fell in every state, led by Victoria at -16.7% and New South Wales at -13.1%, while total dwellings were mixed, with Queensland up 31.8%. The calm headline hid a house plunge offset by an ex-houses rebound. Dollars climbed while unit counts fell because approvals count units, not dollars.

1. Collect: gather every in-scope approval granted in the reference month from councils, certifiers, government contracts and major projects.
2. Classify: label each approval by building type, work type and owner. A house is a detached building with a single dwelling, alterations means changes to existing buildings, and owner follows the intended owner.
3. Aggregate: sum private-house units to integers and values to the nearest $1,000; rounding can make parts differ from totals.
4. Seasonally adjust: remove seasonal patterns with the concurrent method using the newest original estimates. Adjust states independently, reconcile to the national total, publish a trend alongside, with annual review.
5. Compute MoM change: apply 100 x (current-month seasonally adjusted houses minus prior-month value) divided by prior-month value at published integer precision. For example, 8,281 approvals falling to 7,461 gives 100 x (-820) divided by 8,281 = -9.9%.
6. Publish: show current and prior counts with the percentage change in key tables, plus trend and state splits.