{"id":71155,"date":"2025-10-11T02:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T02:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/71155\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T02:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T02:05:09","slug":"northland-builders-hit-by-consent-slump-and-high-costs-despite-interest-rate-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/71155\/","title":{"rendered":"Northland builders hit by consent slump and high costs despite interest rate cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

While some builders had lots of work on, others had been struggling since around last year, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cCompared to 2022 it\u2019s quite different; the market has definitely fallen through. <\/p>\n

\u201cMost of that is the cost of building … it\u2019s the same as 2008 when everyone pulls in tight and doesn\u2019t want to spend any money.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nationally, the construction sector has 10,214 fewer jobs than August 2024, and 18,427 fewer jobs since August 2023, according to Stats NZ. <\/p>\n

In Northland<\/a>, there are currently 243 fewer construction jobs compared with August 2024, and 645 fewer jobs compared with August 2023. <\/p>\n

Matt Hatchard, who owns Hatchard Builders in Russell, said there were \u201cdefinitely fewer jobs out there\u201d over the past 18 months. <\/p>\n

Building costs were still high, fewer consents were being issued, and there had been a drop in group housing and larger commercial projects, he said. <\/p>\n

Some tradies were heading off to Australia to try their luck, he said. <\/p>\n

\"MattMatt Hatchard, who owns Hatchard Builders, said there were fewer jobs available for tradies in Northland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis downturn is quite significant. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s right across the board; it\u2019s not just a few people less wanting to build their house, it\u2019s the Government and K\u0101inga Ora pulling the pin on large scale projects. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just limited to carpentry; there are so many associated trades. <\/p>\n

\u201cSupply chains right the way through are feeling it.\u201d <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Reserve Bank cut the official cash rate<\/a> [OCR] by 50 basis points, bringing it down to 2.5%. <\/p>\n

That caused major banks to drop their home loan rates, with one-year rates falling to 4.49%. <\/p>\n

Alley said while interest rates were easing, there was \u201calways a delay\u201d in the overall building process. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf people want to buy land or something to build, they may start to do it now, but it still takes months before they own the land and go through planning process and have them ready for the builder.\u201d <\/p>\n

Infometrics principal economist Nick Brunsdon said the building sector had faced a challenging few years compared to 2022 when business was booming post Covid. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2022 we had super low interest rates and super high levels of building activity. <\/p>\n

\u201cNationally we hit 50,000 building consents which was a record.\u201d <\/p>\n

While interest rates were slowly coming down, which in theory makes things more attractive, \u201cit\u2019s still not back to where we were in 2022\u201d, Brunsdon said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe may not get back to that level with post Covid super low interest rates. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unlikely we will get building activity back to that level, and that\u2019s challenging for the building sector. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are starting to recover now, but naturally people expect to go back to where we were a couple of years ago, but that may never happen.\u201d <\/p>\n

Brunsdon said another factor hindering growth was high unemployment, with people either having lost their jobs or afraid they may be next.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that environment, not many people will go to the bank and borrow huge amounts of money.\u201d <\/p>\n

While significant, the 21% drop in building consents issued in Northland is an improvement.<\/p>\n

In May, the Northern Advocate reported that in the year to March they were down 31% on the year earlier \u2013 the largest decrease in NZ.<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges, Alley said \u201cthings are starting to pick up\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome architects are starting to see more work coming through.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jenny Ling is a senior journalist at the Northern Advocate. She has a special interest in covering human interest stories, along with finance, roading, and social issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While some builders had lots of work on, others had been struggling since around last year, he said.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[95,56423,674,138,3595,25203,3088,8996,44976,1568,802,10666,127,38402,266,33525,2959,3594,12469,18087,12235,111,139,1067,69,13578,29158,19257,6695,8603,56425,56424,102,18370],"class_list":["post-71155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-and","tag-builders","tag-building","tag-business","tag-by","tag-canned","tag-commercial","tag-consent","tag-consents","tag-construction","tag-costs","tag-cuts","tag-despite","tag-drop","tag-government","tag-hefty","tag-high","tag-hit","tag-interest","tag-issued","tag-mixed","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-nz","tag-projects","tag-putting","tag-rate","tag-regions","tag-slump","tag-squeeze","tag-stubbornly","tag-with","tag-workforce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71155","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=71155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}