The total number of dwellings approved has levelled off in April 2010 following 14 consecutive months of increases in trend terms, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said this week.
This was due to a 1.9 per cent decrease in total houses approved being balanced by an increase of 3.4 per cent for other dwelling approvals.
The drop in total dwellings was driven by a 2.0 per cent decrease in private sector houses. Victoria (-4.1 per cent) showed the largest percentage fall in private sector houses followed by New South Wales (-1.8 per cent) and Queensland (-1.5 per cent).
The increase in `other dwellings' was primarily due to an increase of 5.0 per cent for private sector other dwellings.
Western Australia (up by 9.5 per cent) showed the largest percentage increase in private sector other dwellings, followed by New South Wales (6.2 per cent) and Victoria (5.6 per cent).
The value of total building approved fell 1.0 per cent in April in trend terms. The value of total residential rose by 0.7 per cent while non-residential fell by 4.5 per cent.