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About Kooky and Shaka →New South Wales completed 49,545 homes in the last financial year, the most since 2020-21, the state government said in a ministerial release on Wednesday 7 October 2026. The release, from Planning and Public Spaces Minister Paul Scully, rests on the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Building Activity figures for the June quarter of 2026, published the same morning.
The same day, the Deputy Premier and the Minister for Water unveiled a A$1.2 billion wastewater plant at Kemps Creek, in Western Sydney, built so that new homes around the Aerotropolis can be connected. The two announcements belong together. One counts the homes the state finished; the other deals with one of the reasons more are not finished where the land is.
Set against the state's own commitment, the year looks different. New South Wales has signed up to 377,000 homes in the five years of the National Housing Accord, and after two of them it has built about six in ten of the homes that an even pace would require.
NSW Government release of 7 October 2026; ABS Building Activity, June quarter 2026, seasonally adjusted; the yearly requirement is a calculation from the two.
What the state announced
According to the release, the 49,545 completions are 16 per cent more than in 2024-25, against a national rise of 2.8 per cent over the same period. Completions in the June quarter were more than 40 per cent above the same quarter a year earlier.
Starts rose too. The release puts commencements at 51,807 for the year, more than 10 per cent above 2024-25 and the highest in four years. It adds that more than 150,000 homes have been completed since the present government took office in April 2023, and it credits planning changes, among them more than 70 state-led rezonings. Mr Scully said in the release that the previous government had left a forecast of 36,000 homes a year; that figure is his, and the ABS release does not address it.
Related readSingapore: Lucerne Grand 61% sold as The Serra Residences previewsThe wording of the release leaves one thing open. It says "the last financial year" and then compares it with 2024/25, which could be read as if 2024-25 were the year being reported. The ABS tables settle it: the year is 2025-26, the twelve months to 30 June 2026.
What the ABS tables show
The ABS publishes state figures by quarter, seasonally adjusted. For New South Wales, the four quarters of 2025-26 show 13,351, 12,346, 10,274 and 13,332 completions. That adds up to 49,303. The four quarters of 2024-25 add up to 42,651, so the rise is 15.6 per cent, which rounds to the 16 per cent in the release.
The state's 49,545 and the ABS quarterly sum of 49,303 are not in conflict
The gap is 242 homes. The quarterly state table on the ABS release page is seasonally adjusted, and the ministerial release does not say which series it quotes. A figure taken from the original, unadjusted series can differ from the adjusted sum by a margin of this size.
The June quarter stands out. At 13,332 completions it was 43.5 per cent above the 9,291 of the June quarter of 2025, and 29.8 per cent above the 10,274 of the March quarter. Part of the annual rise is therefore a comparison with a weak base: the June quarter of 2025 was the lowest of the thirteen quarters the ABS page lists for the state.
That weak year also explains a figure that seems to contradict the headline. The Urban Developer, reporting analysis by the Housing Industry Association on 7 October, gave New South Wales 91,954 completions over the past two years, below 95,303 in the two years before. Both statements hold. The 91,954 is the sum of 42,651 and 49,303, and the earlier pair of years was stronger because 2023-24 alone produced 46,603 completions on the ABS quarterly figures. The state had its best single year in five and still finished fewer homes over two years than in the previous two.
Related readSydney's Opal Tower is declared defect-free nearly eight years onCommencements tell a similar story with one nuance. The seasonally adjusted quarters sum to 51,858 for 2025-26 and 47,185 for 2024-25, a rise of 9.9 per cent, just under the "more than 10 per cent" of the release, which again appears to use another series. In 2023-24 the same sum was 40,451. The December quarter of 2025, at 16,481 starts, was the largest of the thirteen quarters shown; the June quarter of 2026 came in at 11,252.
The claim of more than 150,000 completions since April 2023 matches the ABS table if the whole June quarter of 2023 is counted: thirteen quarters to June 2026 add up to 150,088.
The year against the Accord share
The National Housing Accord sets a national target of 1.2 million new, well-located homes over five years from 1 July 2024, according to the federal Treasury. The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure states the New South Wales share as 377,000 homes by 2029, which is 31.4 per cent of the national figure.
Spread evenly, 377,000 homes is 75,400 a year. Two years in, an even pace would have produced 150,800 completions. The state has 91,954 on the ABS quarterly figures, 61 per cent of that pace and 58,846 homes behind it.
ABS Building Activity, June quarter 2026, sum of seasonally adjusted quarters for New South Wales. The Accord pace is 377,000 homes divided by five years; 2023-24 predates the Accord.
What remains is 285,046 homes in three years, or 95,015 a year. That is 1.93 times the 2025-26 result. In quarterly terms it is about 23,750 completions every quarter until June 2029, when the best quarter in the ABS table for the state is 13,351.
The gap matters for money as well as for housing. Treasury's description of the Accord includes a A$3 billion New Home Bonus, paid on performance to states that exceed their share of the target.
Related readUS residential construction spending rose 1.1% in August 2026Nationally, the Housing Industry Association counts 355,817 completions over the two Accord years, as reported by The Urban Developer. New South Wales supplied 25.8 per cent of them, below its 31.4 per cent share of the target. Its neighbour to the south built more in absolute terms: Victoria's seasonally adjusted quarters add up to 56,303 completions in 2025-26.
Why a wastewater plant is housing news
A lot can be zoned and approved and still not be built on if it cannot be connected to water and sewerage. That is the constraint the second release of 7 October addresses.
The Badu Yarragul Water Resource Recovery Facility at Kemps Creek cost A$1.2 billion, according to the release from Deputy Premier and Minister for Western Sydney Prue Car and Water Minister Rose Jackson. It will let more than 140,000 new homes and businesses connect to wastewater services across the Aerotropolis, Bradfield City and the surrounding region. It can treat up to 35 megalitres a day at opening; planned upgrades would double that to 70 megalitres a day and support more than 280,000 connections. A four-megawatt solar farm is designed to supply half of the plant's energy.
The figure of 140,000 covers homes and businesses together, and it is a capacity, not a count of dwellings approved or under way. The release also mentions upgrades to treatment plants at Rouse Hill, Riverstone, Quakers Hill, Liverpool and Glenfield, all in the north-west and south-west growth areas.
What Western Sydney still needs
The department's housing targets give each of 43 council areas a five-year minimum to June 2029. Among those shown on its targets page are 19,500 homes for Parramatta and 8,400 for Penrith. The department says the targets favour areas with existing infrastructure capacity, including transport and water servicing, as reviewed by Infrastructure NSW.
Related readUSA: HUD sets seven steps to rewrite the manufactured home codeResearch by a commercial agency, RWC Western Sydney, reported by Domain on a page last modified on 9 October 2026, measures the distance on the ground. It puts the region's need at more than 500,000 new homes by 2041, or more than 25,600 a year, and its development pipeline at a record 109,000 homes. Yet it finds only about 5,000 dwellings under construction across the four largest growth corridors. The article does not name the data behind the research, so the figures below are the agency's own.
| Corridor | Under construction | Stated yearly need |
|---|---|---|
| Parramatta | 3,161 multi-unit | Not given |
| North-west | 1,305 | Not given |
| South-west | 501 higher-density | 7,335 |
| Outer west, Riverstone corridor | 175 multi-unit | 5,099 |
RWC Western Sydney research as reported by Domain, page modified 9 October 2026. The four rows add up to 5,142 dwellings.
The south-west, which takes in Liverpool, Moorebank and the Bradfield aerotropolis, has what the research calls a state-leading pipeline of 42,900 lots; the Riverstone corridor has 9,670. Peter Vines, managing director of the agency, told Domain the task is to turn approvals into construction starts, and pointed to cost pressures. The same article links the region's slowdown to the collapse of the home builder Bathla Group, which it says left almost 3,000 planned homes and apartments in limbo.
What comes next
The next ABS Building Activity release, for the September quarter of 2026, will show whether the June quarter's 13,332 completions were a step up or a single strong quarter. The starts already counted give some guide: the 51,858 homes commenced in 2025-26 on the seasonally adjusted figures are the stock from which the next two years of completions will mostly come, and that number is itself about two thirds of the 75,400 a year the Accord share implies.
At Kemps Creek, the announced steps are the doubling of capacity to 70 megalitres a day and the wider footprint of more than 280,000 connections; the release gives no date for either. The Accord period ends on 30 June 2029, five years after it began, and the state's council targets run to the same month.
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.
