Metricon Homes has been named the nation’s number one residential builder for the fifth consecutive year. The company reported a total of 4473 new home starts across Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. Of these starts, 4303 were detached houses and 170 were semi-detached dwellings. Source: Timberbiz
Accelerating rapidly up the list as the second most active builder in 2019/20 and the nation’s largest apartment builder, was Brisbane-based Hutchies with 3820 housing starts, followed by Multiplex with 3486 starts.
“Apartment builders continued to increase their representation on the list as the demand for higher density living reached a new peak,” Housing Industry Association chief economist Tim Reardon said.
“This year the number of units constructed by the largest 100 builders rose by 11.2%, while the number of detached homes contracted by 1.0%.
“As this year’s list accounts for housing starts until the end of June 2020, the impact from COVID-19 is limited,” he said.
“The COVID-19 shock has compounded what was already expected to be a difficult year. A slowing in population growth and a bank-imposed credit squeeze caused one of the sharpest corrections in home building on record, with the number of new housing starts falling from over 220,000 in 2018/19 to an estimated 169,000 in 2019/20.”
Despite the cooling market the number of new home-starts in 2019/20 by the nation’s largest 100 builders increased from 67,694 to 69,459.
“The market share of the Housing 100 builders also increased from 35% in 2018/19 to 40% in 2019/20,” Mr Reardon said.
“This is the highest market share for the Housing 100 since 2013/14 and is consistent with previous trends where volume home builders are able to gain market share in a contracting market.
“This also suggests that smaller builders, particularly those outside of the Housing 100, are experiencing a disproportionate share of this market contraction.”
Mr Reardon said that in the 28 years that the HIA had been collecting this data, through the myriad of economic shocks, the participants on the list have remained remarkably stable.
“Of the 20 largest detached home builders in 1993, all but two remain on the Housing 100 list today,” he said.
“Some of these businesses have merged or rebranded, and many have slid down the list over the years, but through all of the economic changes of the past 30 years, this list of hard working, small privately-owned businesses have continued to build homes for Australians.”
