We do love to renovate our houses, that is what the latest data continues to show. Even through the midst of the super housing boom of the last few years, Australians continued to spend up on improving, renovating, extending and converting their existing dwellings.
Although just below the annualized peak achieved for the year-ended December 2016 (AUD8.252 billion), expenditure on alterations and additions for the year-ended June 2017 was just 0.1% lower than a year earlier, at a still very healthy AUD8.196 billion.
As the chart below shows, there is some softness emerging in the quarterly data.
To go straight to the dashboard and take a closer look at the data, click here.
In the June quarter of 2017, expenditure on Alterations and Additions was AUD2.046 billion, down 0.8% on the June quarter in 2016. This is not significant, but this is the real expenditure, so deflated by the inflation rate – up 1.9% – the drop in expenditure is larger, but still modest.
In a housing market that has been positively rampant over recent years, an often overlooked element is the investment that owners are making in the places they already live in. It too has been booming, and continues to be strong!
