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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Builders across Australia started 52,201 homes in the June quarter 2026, 7.0% more than in the March quarter and 14.4% more than a year earlier, according to the Building Activity release the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) published on Wednesday 7 October 2026. The same seasonally adjusted series shows 47,168 homes completed, up 5.8% on the quarter and 15.9% on the June quarter 2025.
Both headline numbers moved the same way, but they were driven by different kinds of housing. Houses drove the rise in starts. Completions were lifted by the other residential category, which takes in the dwellings that are not houses. Behind both sits a pipeline of 248,733 homes under construction at the end of June, a figure the ABS reports in original terms, without seasonal adjustment.
ABS, Building Activity, Australia, June quarter 2026, released 7 October 2026. Commencements and completions seasonally adjusted; homes under construction in original terms.
Houses carry the rise in starts
The ABS counted 31,707 new private houses commenced in the June quarter, seasonally adjusted. That is 11.6% more than in the March quarter and 20.7% more than in the June quarter 2025, the strongest movement among the commencement figures.
New private other residential building went the other way, if only just. The bureau recorded 19,126 commencements in that category, down 0.1% on the quarter. Against a year earlier the figure is still 4.6% higher, so the category has grown over twelve months while standing still over three.
The trend series, which the ABS publishes alongside the seasonally adjusted one, gives a calmer reading of the same period. Trend commencements came to 51,421, down 0.2% on the March quarter and up 7.7% on the year. Read together, the two series say that the annual direction is up on either measure, while the size of the June quarter jump depends on which series a reader follows. Anyone quoting a single percentage from this release should say which series it comes from.
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Completions tell the opposite story by dwelling type. The ABS recorded 19,018 new private other residential dwellings finished in the June quarter, up 13.9% on the March quarter and 58.6% higher than a year earlier. New private houses completed came to 27,039, up 1.4% on the quarter and 1.9% lower than in the June quarter 2025.
In other words, the annual rise of 15.9% in total completions was produced by other residential building, since house completions fell slightly over the same twelve months. In original terms, before seasonal adjustment, the bureau counted 47,653 homes completed, 15.8% more than in the June quarter 2025, so the annual picture holds on both measures.
Putting starts and completions side by side shows where the pipeline is filling and where it is merely being replaced.
ABS, Building Activity, Australia, June quarter 2026. "Other" is new private other residential building.
For houses, starts ran 4,668 ahead of completions in the quarter. For other residential the two were almost level, with 108 more dwellings started than finished. Across all dwellings, the 52,201 commencements exceeded the 47,168 completions by 5,033.
A pipeline of 248,733 homes
When more homes are started than finished, the stock of work in progress grows. The ABS put the number of dwellings under construction at 248,733 at the end of the June quarter, in original terms. The same release gives 244,132 for the March quarter 2026 and 224,571 for the June quarter 2025, which makes the pipeline 4,601 homes larger than three months earlier and 24,162 larger than a year earlier.
The composition of that pipeline is the reverse of the composition of starts. Of the homes under construction, 152,264 were new other residential dwellings and 95,447 were new houses. On those figures other residential makes up about 61% of everything being built, and houses about 38%, even though houses made up the larger share of the quarter's commencements.
Related readDubai Islands gets a shoreline contract and a new Bay Estate communityFor anyone selling off the plan or waiting on a settlement date, that is the part of the release closest to daily work. It counts the homes that builders across the country have still to finish.
Four states, four different quarters
The national rise was not shared evenly. The ABS state series, seasonally adjusted, shows starts rising in Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia between the March and June quarters and falling in New South Wales, while completions rose in New South Wales alone among these four.
| State | Commenced | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 11,252 (11,907) | 13,332 (10,274) |
| Victoria | 16,239 (14,128) | 14,191 (14,523) |
| South Australia | 3,913 (3,657) | 3,112 (3,831) |
| Western Australia | 7,240 (5,930) | 4,814 (5,136) |
ABS, Building Activity, Australia, June quarter 2026. March quarter figures as revised in the same release.
Victoria started more homes than any other state in the table, and added 2,111 to its March quarter count. Western Australia added 1,310 and South Australia 256. New South Wales started 655 fewer homes than in the March quarter, yet finished 3,058 more, the largest single movement in the table. Completions slipped by 332 in Victoria, 719 in South Australia and 322 in Western Australia.
One consequence is that New South Wales completed more homes than it commenced in the quarter, by 2,080, while Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia each commenced more than they completed. These are preliminary figures for a single quarter, and the ABS has already revised the March quarter numbers shown in brackets, so one quarter is a thin basis for a conclusion about any one state.
Work done reaches A$45.8 billion
Building Activity also measures the value of work actually carried out on site, which is a different thing from the number of homes started or finished. In seasonally adjusted chain volume terms, the ABS put total building work done in the June quarter at A$45,834.8 million, or about A$45.8 billion, up 1.1% on the quarter and 10.0% on the year.
Related readIs a Dubai off-plan launch authorised? What a broker can verifyNew residential building accounted for A$23,644.9 million of that, up 1.4% on the March quarter. Within it, work done on new houses rose 1.5% to A$13.8 billion and work on other residential building rose 1.2% to A$9.9 billion. Residential alterations and additions came to A$4,119.0 million, up 1.3%. Non-residential building made up the remaining A$18,070.9 million, up 0.8%.
The gap between the two kinds of measure is worth noticing. Commencements rose 7.0% in the quarter and completions 5.8%, while the value of new residential work done rose 1.4%. The counts and the value of work done are separate measures, and in this quarter they moved at different speeds.
What the government and the industry said
The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the Minister for Housing, Homelessness and Cities, Clare O'Neil, responded in a joint media release dated 7 October. They described the numbers as encouraging, and added that the series can bounce around from one quarter to the next and that there is more work to do. The release set the annual changes of 14.4% in commencements and 15.9% in completions against the position when the government took office, when, it said, commencements were down 28.9% over the year and completions down 7.0%. It also said that the government is building 55,000 social and affordable homes.
The property industry read the same figures against the national target. The trade publication Australian Conveyancer, in a report dated 8 October, quoted Matthew Kandelaars, group executive of policy and advocacy at the Property Council of Australia: "Australia still has a long way to go if we're serious about meeting our housing targets." The publication set the release against the Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes.
Related readMelbourne's Preston Market plan: 900 apartments, eight towersAccording to the same report, Mr Kandelaars pointed to tax changes passed in late June and to a ban on SMSF borrowing for property investment, which it said started on 10 August, and noted that the Property Council's September sentiment survey was at its lowest level since the pandemic. Those are the Property Council's arguments as the trade press reported them. The ABS release itself takes no view on policy.
Approvals and the next release
A home is approved before it is started, and the most recent approvals figures are less even than the June quarter starts. The ABS Building Approvals release for August 2026, published on 30 September, showed 16,953 dwellings approved in seasonally adjusted terms, down 6.1% from 18,056 in July. Private houses rose 3.7% to 10,885, which was 18.4% higher than in August 2025 and the eighth month above 10,000, the bureau said. Private dwellings excluding houses fell 21.2% to 5,674.
That split matches the June quarter pattern in starts: houses rising, other residential flat or falling. By state, the ABS media release reported private house approvals up 27.7% in South Australia and 8.6% in Western Australia in August, and down 4.5% in New South Wales, the only state where they fell. The value of total residential building approved was A$11.30 billion, down 0.6%.
The June quarter figures are preliminary and will be revised
The ABS says this first estimate rests on a response rate of about 85% of the value of work done, below the long-term average. The next Building Activity release is scheduled for 13 January 2027.
The scale of such revisions is visible in this release. The ABS raised its March quarter 2026 estimates, adding A$453.9 million, or 1.0%, to the value of work done, and 433 dwellings, also 1.0%, to the number commenced. The value of commencements for that quarter was revised up by A$1.5 billion, or 2.8%. Set against the state table above, where several quarterly differences amount to a few hundred homes, revisions of that size are a reason to read the smaller movements with care until the final figures arrive.
For the trade, the release leaves three numbers to carry into the months ahead: 5,033 more homes started than finished in the quarter, a pipeline 24,162 homes larger than a year earlier, and a house sector whose starts grew 20.7% over twelve months while its completions fell 1.9%. The September quarter figures, due on 13 January 2027 with the final June quarter data, will show whether those gaps have begun to close.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
