Housing consents are booming but will they be built?

Auckland has had a boom year for housing consents – but the challenge now will be making sure they all turn into houses.

In 2017, there were 10,867 consents, the most since 2004 and up 8.4 per cent from 2016. On average there were more than 900 consents a month, including record numbers for retirement village units, townhouses and flats.

‘‘Over a third of all new homes in New Zealand were consented in the Auckland region last year, which is in line with Auckland’s share of the New Zealand population,’’ Statistics New Zealand’s construction statistics manager Melissa McKenzie said.

That takes into account multidwelling complexes. Only a quarter of all new standalone houses were in Auckland in the year.

Nationwide, 31,087 houses were consented for in 2017, up 3.4 per cent on 2016.

Economist Shaumbeel Eaqub said it was a good result. ‘‘It’s a really big number. The important thing is if we want to solve the housing crisis this can’t be the peak. It has to stay at this level for a number of years.’’

He said it would be a challenge to convert consents into houses. In previous years when consents had peaked, higher numbers had not translated into homes.

‘‘People don’t realise construction costs have increased or that time periods have blown out. Everything gets multiplied.’’

Eaqub said he had heard from construction firms without much building work on their books.

ASB economists said they expected Auckland activity to hold up.

Nationwide, the number of new homes consented to fell 9.6 per cent for December, 2017, which ASB said could be due to uncertainty about the new KiwiBuild policy. That might prompt developers to hold back on construction plans.

‘‘Once further details of KiwiBuild are released, we expect housing construction demand to resume.

‘‘We remain upbeat about the housing construction outlooks in Auckland and Wellington.’’