The number of new homes being completed in Auckland shot back up in the second quarter of this year after a dip in the first quarter.

Auckland Council issued 3151 Code Compliance Certificates (CCCs) for new dwellings in the second quarter of 2019, up 13.4% compared to the second quarter of last year and up 159% compared the second quarter of 2014.

The steady growth in the number of new dwellings being completed in Auckland is shown in the graph below, which plots the number of CCCs issued by Auckland Council in each quarter of the last five years.

CCCs are probably the most important measure of new housing supply because they are issued when a building is completed and ready for occupation, unlike building consents which are issued prior to building work commencing.

Most new dwellings are completed within two years of a building consent being issued, which means a delay of roughly around two years between the time a consent is issued for a dwelling and when it receives a CCC.

So to get an idea of how many dwellings consented actually get built, you need to compare the number of CCCs issued with the number of building consents issued two years previously.

The accompanying table (below) shows how many CCCs were issued in Auckland in each June year from 2014 to 2019.

This shows a steady increase from 4322 in the year to June 2014 to 10,573 in the year to June 2019.

Those figures are then matched against the number of new dwelling consents issued in the 12 months to June two years previously, i.e., from 2012 to 2017.

This shows a very strong correlation between the two sets of figures, apart from 2017 and to a lesser degree 2018, when the number of CCCs issued was below the number of building consents issued two years previously.

But in the 12 months to June 2019, the number of CCCs issued shot back up and overtook the number of building consents issued two years previously, suggesting most of the new dwellings being consented in Auckland are actually being built and completed.

If that trend continues, then the number of new dwelling consents issued in the year to June 2018 suggests that the number of new homes completed in Auckland over the 12 months to June next year could rise to more than 12,000. That would be up 17.1% on the current level of new dwelling completions in the region, and in the following year it could rise to more than 14,000, up a third on current completion levels.

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