Construction boom will last another three years

Residential building was supposed to peak this year, topping out at $21 billion across the nation.

The Ministry for Business, Innovation, and Employment are now predicting that New Zealand’s construction boom will last three years longer than expected. As Quantity Surveyors It’s predicted to continue to grow through 2020 and see a workload increase of another 23 per cent until then, before it begins to taper off.

The New Zealand Institute of Building’s CEO Malcolm Fleming says the construction industry, ever cyclical in nature, has been moving to a model that is “more sustainable and robust”.

Auckland isn’t the biggest growth area, despite what the media and demand would lead us to believe. It’s actually the Waikato and Bay of Plenty areas, where overall construction grew by 13 per cent and residential homes saw a large 19 per cent growth.

Canterbury has remained stable, but hasn’t seen growth. Much of the residential rebuild work has been completed, but this is being balanced off by high-yield commercial projects, which are sustaining the workforce and will continue to do so past 2017.

Here’s what you can watch out for in the three main urban centres:

Auckland: commercial projects will jump dramatically in the next two years. It hit $2.3 billion last year but by 2019 will propel to $3.9 billion, thanks to the range of non-residential building activity going on around the City of Sails. Auckland also has many infrastructure project planned such as roading and the City Rail link.

Wellington: Earthquake strengthening is big business after the large rumble in November 2016, and there’s still some demolition work to be done. As far as the future goes, it’ll be civic, governmental, education, and other commercial buildings that keep the Capital’s building industry going.

Christchurch: Non-residential construction is expected to stay above $2.2 billion a year in Christchurch until 2020. It’s mostly large projects such as public buildings, shopping centres, schools, and sports facilities in the pipeline. Infrastructure also remains a key driver for the construction industry’s continual success.