Sales of new homes strengthened through 2024, a monthly survey of Australia’s home builders has revealed.
The latest HIA New Home Sales report shows that the strongest increase was in Queensland, where sales rose by 40.6% in the 2024 calendar year.
This was followed by South Australia (up 25.8%) and New South Wales (11.8%). Sales in Victoria were virtually unchanged (down 0.6%), while Western Australia recorded a 7.1% decline in sales in 2024.
HIA Economist Maurice Tapang noted the strong result happened despite prevailing headwinds of high borrowing, land and building costs.
“Interest rate stability, low levels of unemployment, strong population growth and improvements in real wages helped boost new home sales from its trough, increasing by 8.2% in 2024”, Tapang said.
“New home buyers are slowly returning to market amid expectations of rate cuts this year”, he added.
The recent rise in new home sales has been geographically dispersed, driven by markets outside of the two largest states, New South Wales and Victoria.
Western Australia was the first market to see a notable increase in new home sales last year, with a slowdown in sales in 2024 coming as a result of capacity constraints.
Queensland and South Australia followed, recording the strongest growth in new home sales across all markets in 2024, off their troughs in the previous year.
The volume of new homes sold in Victoria was virtually unchanged in 2024 compared with the previous year, while New South Wales recorded an 11.8% increase in the 2024 calendar year, albeit from very low levels in 2023 when sales fell by more than 50%.
“The high cost of residential land, particularly in Sydney, is preventing New South Wales from seeing a stronger increase in new home sales despite ongoing population growth and acute shortages of housing”, Tapang said.
“The recent increase in new home sales in most markets is beginning to trickle through to approvals data, with 109,610 houses approved nationally in the most recent twelve months.
“With new home sales and detached house approvals picking up in 2024, the improvement in the volume of new homes commencing construction is likely to be sustained, progressing further into 2025”, he concluded.
We hope you have enjoyed this article. It is our pleasure being your real estate agents in Brisbane.
If you would like any assistance or advice, please feel very welcome to get in touch with our Brisbane real estate agents, Brisbane property management team, or Brisbane buyers agents.
