DECEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Dec 16	Nov 16 to Dec 16	Dec 15 to Dec 16
		no.	% change	% change
TREND
	Total dwelling units approved	17 019	-2.5	-13.2
	Private sector houses	9 282	-0.4	-5.7
	Private sector dwellings excluding houses	7 527	-4.7	-21.1
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED
	Total dwelling units approved	17 327	-1.2	-11.4
	Private sector houses	9 197	-1.6	-9.6
	Private sector dwellings excluding houses	8 014	0.9	-13.0

Dwelling units approved

Private sector houses approved

DECEMBER KEY POINTS


TOTAL DWELLING UNITS

• The trend estimate for total dwellings approved fell 2.5% in December and has fallen for seven months.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved fell 1.2% in December following a rise of 7.5% in the previous month.

PRIVATE SECTOR HOUSES

• The trend estimate for private sector houses approved fell 0.4% in December and has fallen for 10 months.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for private sector houses fell 1.6% in December following a rise of 0.1% in the previous month.

PRIVATE SECTOR DWELLINGS EXCLUDING HOUSES

• The trend estimate for private sector dwellings excluding houses fell 4.7% in December and has fallen for seven months.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for private sector dwellings excluding houses rose 0.9% in December and has risen for two months.

VALUE OF BUILDING APPROVED

• The trend estimate of the value of total building approved fell 3.5% in December and has fallen for five months. The value of residential building fell 2.4% and has fallen for seven months. The value of non-residential building fell 5.6% and has fallen for four months.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate of the value of total building approved rose 0.4% in December and has risen for two months. The value of residential building rose 0.2% and has risen for two months. The value of non-residential building rose 0.7% after falling for two months.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
December 2016 - Additional	9 February 2017
January 2017	2 March 2017
January 2017 - Additional	9 March 2017
February 2017	3 April 2017
February 2017 - Additional	10 April 2017
March 2017	8 May 2017

DATA NOTES

In this release, revisions are provided for the time period from July 2015 to November 2016 and include revisions resulting from the Building Approvals Annual Review. The Building Approvals Annual Review has been operating since July 2015, requesting historical data back to the most recent large scale review (June 2012). Further information about the Annual Review and other potential sources of revisions can be found in the feature article released with the January 2016 8731.0 publication - "Revisions to Building Approval Statistics".

Small area data cubes will be released in an “Additional Information” release five business days after the main publication. The data cubes will be for Statistical Area Level 2 and Local Government Areas. Release dates are published under the “Forthcoming Issues” section of the publication and in ABS Release Advice.

In July 2016, the ABS released the second edition of the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) (cat. no. 1270.0.55.001). The updated ASGS will be implemented in Building Approvals, Australia (cat. no. 8731.0) from the January 2017 issue, scheduled for release on 2 March 2017.

A number of time series spreadsheets contain ‘np’ (not available for publication) annotations. This is due to confidential data being contained in these series.


REVISIONS THIS MONTH

Revisions to the total number of dwelling units approved in this issue are:

Dwellings	2015-16	2016-17	TOTAL
NSW	97	96	193
Vic.	17	-2	15
Qld	-	64	64
SA	226	2	228
WA	-	50	50
Tas.	-	3	3
NT	-	-	-
ACT	-	-	-
Total	340	213	553

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.