ASX rises to three-week high, slowdown in building approvals

ABC NEWS (Australia)

In finance this week, the Bureau of Statistics says the number of new houses and units being approved for construction is a lot lower than what's needed to keep-up with Australia’s growing population.

Transcript

00:00Well, at the rate things are going, the federal government has no hope of meeting its target

00:06of building 1.2 million new homes in five years to improve housing affordability.

00:12For starters, that's 20,000 new homes a month.

00:15However, the latest figures from the ABS show that only about 15,000 were approved for construction

00:21in November, which is a 3.6% drop over the previous month due to a slowdown in new units

00:27and apartments.

00:28And that's just the approval process, which means actual building work hasn't even started

00:33yet.

00:34And when you zoom out, just over 164,000 new homes were approved over the past year, which

00:40is nowhere near enough to keep up with Australia's rapid population growth, even despite its

00:45recent slowdown.

00:47On top of that, the average time it takes to build a new apartment has jumped to more

00:51than two years, thanks to surging construction costs, higher interest rates, and thousands

00:56of builders going broke in the last few years.

01:00It certainly won't help with the re-election.

01:01Meanwhile, the share market went up by just 0.3%, which isn't terribly exciting, with

01:07nine Qantas and IDP education among today's best performers, while mining stocks did badly

01:14again, as iron ore prices continue to fall on concerns about the health of China's economy.

01:20But there wasn't too much movement for gold and oil prices.

01:24Overseas, it was a mixed bag for Asian markets, while Wall Street received another boost from

01:29the AI chipmaker Nvidia, whose market value has now surged to a new record of about 5.9

01:35trillion Australian dollars.

01:38And the Aussie dollar has recovered slightly, but is still pretty weak at about 62.5 US

01:42cents.

01:44And that's finance.

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