Other residential building refers to structures other than houses which are built for accommodation purposes. This includes buildings such as blocks of flats, home units, attached townhouses, villa units, terrace houses, semidetached houses and maisonettes. The level of activity for this type of building is highly variable and does not follow the regular pattern experienced in house construction. This is because of the generally larger size of other residential building construction jobs and the varying extent of speculative building of private townhouses, flats, home units and similar residential building projects over time.
Whereas table 20.9 presented the number of new other residential dwelling units approved, commenced and completed in 2001, graph 20.10 shows a 10-year time series of commencements and completions of these types of buildings ending with the December quarter 2001. It can be seen that the completions series generally has lagged the commencements series by one to two quarters, although this pattern has been less clear since the June quarter 1997.
The number of new other residential dwelling units commenced in the December quarter 2001 was 35% greater than in the December quarter 2000. On the other hand, the number of other residential dwelling units completed in the December quarter 2001 was 17% lower than in the December quarter 2000.
20.10 NEW OTHER RESIDENTIAL UNITS: Trend estimates