BUILDING INDUSTRY ON THE RISE AT LAST

It has been reported recently from a number of areas that Australia’s residential house prices have reached a three-year high in the June quarter 2013 and looks set to keep climbing. The national house prices have risen by 2.8% in the June quarter and 5.4% in the year to June 2013 and expected to continue. This level of growth has not been seen since March 2010 and provides some encouragement to the turf producer. This is the third consecutive quarterly rise in the national house prices.

The important thing here is that unlike the price boom of 2009-10 that was fuelled by the Federal government’s first home owner Grant, this increase has not been driven by anything in particular

The Australian Industry Group (AiG), Housing Institute of Australia (HIA) and the Queensland Master Builders (MBA) advise that activity is set to accelerate through the remainder of 2013 with market momentum and prices clearly on the rise. This is supported and assisted by the lowest interest rates in decades providing consumer confidence and generally solid economic conditions.

Residential construction in Queensland continues to slowly recover but conditions in the commercial building area remain low. It is expected that these increases will continue even though all of the surveys confirm that we have hit the bottom and things are improving. Residential area will improve faster than commercial. This rise is anticipated to continue into 2014.

Commercial construction remained flat and the outlook tough. The lack of new projects coming online does not offset the projects coming to an end. The resource regions of Mackay, Whitsundays and central Queensland continued to perform relatively better than the rest of the state.

It is hoped that the spring of 2013 can provide some economic benefit to the turf producer across Queensland. It is also good to have forecasts projecting increases through 2014 for residential construction.