Acute shortage of housing stock
The continued drop of building approvals could impact on the climb of housing stock shortages.
The March building approvals fell for another month and were significantly down over the quarter, hitting their lowest level since May last year.
Total building approvals fell by 5.7 per cent in March, with detached house approvals dropping by 6.9 per cent and unit multi-unit approvals by 2.6 per cent.
HIA chief economist Harley Dale said the renewed trend decline in building approvals, which began five months ago, was now firmly entrenched.
The clear message is that the acute shortage of housing stock is going to worsen this year, which highlights the urgency of implementing policies to boost the supply of affordable housing,? Mr Dale said.
He said this indication is apparent before seeing the full impact of the interest rates rises over the past nine months.
For the March 2008 quarter building approvals were off by 6.6 per cent.
Approvals for detached houses fell by 2.6 per cent and multi-unit approvals suffered a hefty 14.8 per cent decline.
Building approvals fell over the March 2008 quarter in five of the eight states and territories around Australia.
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