The latest building approval numbers may herald the beginning of the end of the construction boom that the Australian economy is so reliant on, according to experts.

Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday showed that buildings approvals fell by 17.2 per cent between April 2016 and April 2017, based on seasonally adjusted figures.

‘Seasonally adjusted’ means the data experts removed the estimated effects of seasonal and calendar related variation so the effects of other influences could be seen more clearly.

On the ‘trend’ figures, which smooth seasonal figures for major events, approvals fell in Victoria (-3.2 per cent), Western Australia (-2.3 per cent) and the Northern Territory (-2.2 per cent) in the month of April alone.

Brendan Coates, an economist at the Grattan Institute, said the numbers proved that heat was starting to come out of the residential construction, and he couldn’t see anything preventing a price correction except a Reserve Bank rate cut or similar shock.

“It doesn’t appear there’s much life left in this housing boom absent of some kind of shock,” he told The New Daily.

Building approvals haven’t dropped across the board. In fact, the increase from last month was 0.1 of a per cent. And Mr Coates cautioned that monthly numbers are highly variable.

The April trend figures saw the ACT bring in the highest increase in approvals, (+3.6 per cent) while Queensland (+3.4 per cent), New South Wales (+1.7 per cent), South Australia (+1.6 per cent) and Tasmania followed behind.

But that still leaves the fall, in trend terms, at 13.8 per cent over the last 12 months.

Mr Coates said one reason for the size of the fall was the record residential construction that’s been the main driver of economic activity since the mining boom.

“Approvals are the early indicator of what’s going to happen to construction,” he said.

“If we are going to see a big slowdown in residential construction, it’s a couple of years away.”

He said the lag time between approval and building will provide some breathing room between now and the construction slowdown.

“Construction activity should remain strong over the next two years unless there’s a problem in the companies that maintain this pipeline.”

One area to watch is the completion of major apartment projects. A falling off of apartment construction has been blamed for the 19.7 per cent drop in activity since last year.

The Melbourne and Brisbane apartment markets are widely thought to be oversupplied.

About 5000 new apartments are expected to be completed and up for sale in Melbourne this year alone.

Not only that, but values of apartments have moved little. BIS Economics found 50 per cent of new apartments bought and sold in the last five years sold at a loss, while in Brisbane and Sydney off-the-plan buyers got little growth.

If trends continue the high demand for construction labour that’s sustained economic growth in Melbourne and Victoria wide may be at risk.

Construction is a huge employer in Victoria and Australia more broadly, with almost 10 per cent of the workforce working in some form of construction job, according to ABS figures released in March.

The Reserve Bank sounded the alarm earlier this year about deteriorating market conditions after investment declined in late 2016.

The central bank warned that increased supply and lower population growth had already depressed rents and apartment prices in Perth and Brisbane. The results were seen in the last six months of falls in dwelling units approved in WA and five months in Queensland.

In a separate publication, the RBA pointed to residential building approvals being “almost 50 per cent higher than their long-term average over the past two years”.

They said the “lag between the decision to build a higher-density dwelling and its completion means that the impact on the supply of housing, including prices and vacancy rates, may be less predictable than in the past”.

However, RMIT economics professor Ashton De Silva said it was difficult to predict the future of the housing market based on dwelling approval figures.

He said the figures were “indicative of a lot of variation”.