Seasonally adjusted data show building activity in the June quarter was up 6% on the March quarter, although it was still 10.6% lower than the December 2023 quarter.<\/p>\n
Building consents \u2013 an indicator of planned building activity \u2013 were 7.7% higher than the low point reached in the March 2024 quarter, but 8.9% lower than the September 2023 quarter.<\/p>\n
Master Builders chief executive Ankit Sharma said most of its members are reporting a strong or steady pipeline, and they were seeing signs of improved business and consumer confidence.<\/p>\n
He said Canterbury was seeing some of its strongest growth in recent years, driven by strong demand from first-home buyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who are migrating into Canterbury from Auckland and other regions are not worried about what\u2019s happening with the economy and the election coming up \u2013 they actually want to buy a house for their family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are also now seeing an uptick in people wanting to downsize into a lower-cost lower-maintenance home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growth in construction can often lag behind growth in other sectors and BNZ head of research Stephen Toplis said it was surprising to see construction driving economic growth at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bit a of a strange quirk that construction is doing as well as it is, but we do know that there has been quite a lot of work in terms of infrastructure build \u2013 hospitals, schools, the like.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect it\u2019s revealing the momentum that\u2019s coming through from the broader infrastructure build, and that includes private infrastructure and state sector infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Building and Construction Minister Simon Watts said the 2.7% quarterly growth was \u201cmaterial\u201d and demonstrated the value of construction to the broader economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuilding and construction has come out of a downturn \u2013 we all know that since Covid \u2013 but this Government is seeing that as a significant area of priority.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an industry that grows and builds our country and we need it to be operating at full potential. Anything that we can do around removing red tape and bureaucracy is a good thing and we\u2019re going to continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Employers and Manufacturers\u2019 Association head of advocacy Alan McDonald said the businesses he was speaking to are extremely positive about the broader economic outlook, and consumer confidence should pick up in time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are seeing more of, and hearing more of, is our members are less concerned about what\u2019s happening internationally or even domestically, and they\u2019re just saying \u2018we\u2019re going to get on with it\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusinesspeople are seeing and a bit more attuned to what\u2019s happening going forward and they\u2019re seeing that in their order books and those sorts of things. It takes some time for consumers to catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Sergel is Newstalk ZB\u2019s business reporter. He\u2019s been covering business, politics, local government and consumer affairs for over a decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seasonally adjusted data show building activity in the June quarter was up 6% on the March quarter, although…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[11164,674,138,1568,9961,219,1888,3499,54448,112272,2510,111,139,425,69,46930,8602,12975,8601,5257,7811,61,102],"class_list":["post-606609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-began","tag-building","tag-business","tag-construction","tag-downturn","tag-economy","tag-first","tag-growth","tag-indicators","tag-multi","tag-multiple","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-now","tag-nz","tag-pointing","tag-rebound","tag-sector","tag-seeing","tag-significant","tag-since","tag-to","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}