WA building industry best in nation

The analysis is then aggregated in a scoring system to generate a league table ranking the relative strength of residential building conditions in each jurisdiction.

Harley Dale, HIA chief economist, said the report shows conditions in the residential building industry diverge both across and within states and territories.

“The Housing Scorecard aggregates large amounts of housing information to present a concise account of the influences these divergences have on industry performance,” he said.

According to Mr Dale, mining investment and strong population growth contributed to WA’s top ranking, while the ACT was ranked second despite a deteriorating performance in the last year.

Despite ranking fifth, Mr Dale said NSW’s result was very pleasing.

“A very encouraging finding is that the resurgence underway in New South Wales’ residential building industry is lifting the state up the table after spending the best part of the last decade in the wilderness.

“Overall, residential building conditions in NSW still rank only fifth nationally, but there is clearly some positive momentum there,” said Mr Dale.

Of all states and territories Tasmania’s building industry was ranked as the weakest.

“It was not so long ago, back during the financial crisis, that Tasmania was the top ranking state for residential building,” said Mr Dale.

“Unfortunately, the state’s broader economy has undergone a marked deterioration since then and the weaker demand conditions delivered a big hit to the state’s residential building industry,” he said.

National ranking:
1. WA
2. ACT
3. VIC
4. NT
5. NSW
6. SA
7. QLD
8. TAS