The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s August Quarterly Report pushed the 1.2 million target back another quarter. The number that matters more to most home builders is sitting in the ABS data underneath it.
The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council released its August 2026 Quarterly Report on Friday 21 August. Most of the coverage that followed led with the same figure, which is that the Accord target of 1.2 million new homes is now expected to be reached in the December quarter of 2030, one quarter later than the Council’s April forecast.
That is a story about a target, and it is a story the industry has heard before. There is a different story in the same document about output, and it is the one that describes what most builders are currently experiencing.
Approvals and completions are moving in opposite directions
The Council’s national scorecard reads well at the top. Quarterly building approvals are up 26 per cent on the quarter immediately before the Accord period began. Quarterly commencements are up 15 per cent on the same base. Around 308,000 new homes have been completed since the Accord started, which is roughly a quarter of the target. There were 244,000 dwellings under construction in the March quarter of 2026, which the Council describes as the highest result since the series began in 1984.
Then there is the state and territory table, and specifically its second column.
Over the rolling twelve months, building completions fell in five of the eight jurisdictions. Tasmania is down 13 per cent. Victoria and Western Australia are both down 9 per cent. Queensland is down 2 per cent and New South Wales down 1 per cent. Only South Australia at 16 per cent, the Northern Territory at 28 per cent and the ACT at 5 per cent recorded increases. Nationally, completions fell 4 per cent.
Set that against the approvals column in the same table. Queensland approved 23 per cent more dwellings over the same twelve months and completed 2 per cent fewer. Western Australia approved 11 per cent more and completed 9 per cent fewer. Tasmania approved 17 per cent more and completed 13 per cent fewer.
| State or territory | Approvals, 12 months | Completions, 12 months | Accord date |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | +6% | −1% | Mar 2032 |
| Victoria | −2% | −9% | Dec 2029 |
| Queensland | +23% | −2% | Mar 2031 |
| South Australia | +4% | +16% | Mar 2031 |
| Western Australia | +11% | −9% | Dec 2029 |
| Tasmania | +17% | −13% | Jun 2034 |
| Northern Territory | +20% | +28% | After 2034 |
| ACT | +42% | +5% | Dec 2029 |
| Australia | +8% | −4% | Dec 2030 |
Source: National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, Quarterly Report August 2026. Approvals data to June 2026, completions data to the March 2026 quarter.
Approvals measure permission. Completions measure delivery. The distance between those two columns is the distance between what the planning system is releasing and what the industry is finishing, and over the past year it has widened across most of the country.
Approvals measure permission. Completions measure delivery. Over the past year the gap between them has widened across most of the country.
The number underneath the number
The Council’s completions figure covers all dwelling types together. Split it, and the picture changes considerably.
ABS Building Activity data for the March 2026 quarter, which is the source the Council draws on, puts total dwellings completed nationally at 43,816 in seasonally adjusted terms. That was down 0.4 per cent on the December quarter and up 0.8 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier. Broadly flat.
Inside that flat national figure are two segments moving hard in opposite directions.
New private sector houses completed came in at 26,201, down 6.1 per cent on the March quarter of 2025. New private sector other residential completions, the ABS category covering townhouses and apartments, came in at 16,365, up 10.5 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier.
Detached housing is the segment most residential builders work in. It is also the segment that has been carrying the approvals recovery, with private sector house approvals running above 10,000 a month for most of this year. And it is the segment where completions have fallen furthest over the past twelve months.
What the record pipeline is actually made of
The 244,000 figure deserves a closer look for the same reason.
In original terms, the ABS recorded 243,864 dwellings under construction at the end of the March quarter. Of those, 90,972 were new houses and 151,902 were new other residential.
Two things follow. The first is that the record is narrow. The previous high in the ABS published series was 243,825 in the September quarter of 2022. The March 2026 result clears it by 39 dwellings.
The second is that the composition has shifted underneath the total. Houses under construction peaked at 106,242 in the September quarter of 2022 and now sit at 90,972, roughly 14 per cent below that level. The growth in the total has come almost entirely from the other residential category, which has climbed from 126,824 at the end of 2024 to 151,902.
So the record is real, but it is an apartment and townhouse record. Measured in detached dwellings, the volume of work sitting on the ground today is smaller than it was four years ago.
Cost moved the timeline, not demand
The Council is explicit about why its forecast slipped, and the reason sits on the cost side rather than the demand side.
Higher fuel and petrochemical prices flowing from the conflict in the Middle East have pushed construction costs up in recent months. House construction costs rose 2 per cent in the June quarter of 2026 and now sit 51 per cent above where they were before the pandemic and the supply chain disruption that followed it. The Council notes that rising costs may reduce the financial feasibility of some projects, and that softer market sentiment along with recent interest rate increases is likely to see some construction deferred.
That has produced a direction change in one of the Council’s own headline measures. In March, the Council reported that it was 0.9 per cent cheaper in real terms to build a new house than at the start of the Accord period. In August, the same measure reads 0.2 per cent more expensive. A real cost advantage that took two years to open closed inside a single quarter.
Where each jurisdiction now sits
Five of the eight jurisdictions had their expected Accord completion date pushed back relative to the Council’s April report. New South Wales moved from June 2031 to March 2032. Queensland moved from September 2030 to March 2031. Western Australia and the ACT both moved from June 2029 to December 2029. Tasmania moved from December 2033 to June 2034. Victoria, South Australia and the Northern Territory were unchanged.
Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT remain the only jurisdictions the Council expects to reach their share of the target inside 2029. Victoria has approved 37 per cent of its share and built 32 per cent. Western Australia has approved 38 per cent and built 29 per cent. Nationally, 33 per cent of the target has been approved and 26 per cent built, at a point 40 per cent of the way through the Accord period on approvals data and 35 per cent of the way through on completions data.
None of that divergence is new. It is the same pattern visible in the state by state approvals picture through the first half of this year, where outer growth corridors cooled while regional centres and middle ring suburbs lifted. What the Council’s table adds is the delivery side of the same story.
A caveat worth carrying
The March quarter Building Activity data underpinning all of this is preliminary. The ABS collected it at a response rate of approximately 85 per cent of the value of building work done, which the Bureau itself notes is below the long term average. Final March quarter figures are scheduled for release on 7 October 2026, alongside the June quarter.
Revisions in this series are routine and can be material. In this same release the ABS revised December quarter residential commencements up by 885 dwellings. The completions picture described above may read differently in October.
The Good Builder Take
The Accord conversation has run on approvals for two years, largely because approvals are published monthly, they are easy to report, and they have been going up. Completions are published quarterly, they attract less attention, and for most of the past year they have been going the other way.
The divergence inside the completions number is the part that has gone almost entirely unreported. Nationally, completions are close to flat. Underneath that, detached house completions have fallen 6.1 per cent over twelve months while townhouse and apartment completions have risen 10.5 per cent. Those are two different markets having two different years, averaged into a single number that describes neither of them accurately.
The same split runs through the pipeline. A record 244,000 dwellings under construction sounds like a full order book until the composition is read, at which point it is a higher density pipeline sitting alongside a detached pipeline around 14 per cent smaller than it was in 2022.
A target date moving from September 2030 to December 2030 is a forecasting revision. Detached completions falling 6.1 per cent in twelve months while the approvals for those same homes rise is something else, and it is the number worth watching when the final March quarter data lands in October.
Frequently asked questions
The Council released its August 2026 Quarterly Report on 21 August. It found that quarterly building approvals are up 26 per cent and quarterly commencements up 15 per cent compared with the quarter before the National Housing Accord period began, with around 308,000 homes completed so far. It now expects the 1.2 million target to be reached in the December quarter of 2030, one quarter later than it forecast in April, and it attributes the slip mainly to rising construction costs.
There were 243,864 dwellings under construction at the end of the March 2026 quarter in original terms, according to the ABS. The Council describes this as the highest result since the series began in 1984. Of that total, 90,972 were new houses and 151,902 were new other residential dwellings, meaning townhouses and apartments.
Nationally they are close to flat, but the average conceals a split. Total dwellings completed in the March 2026 quarter were 43,816 in seasonally adjusted terms, up 0.8 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier. Within that, new private sector house completions fell 6.1 per cent over twelve months to 26,201, while new private sector other residential completions rose 10.5 per cent to 16,365. On the Council’s rolling twelve month measure, completions fell in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania.
An approval is the permit that allows construction to begin, published monthly by the ABS in Building Approvals. A commencement is the point at which work actually starts on site. A completion is a finished dwelling. Commencements and completions are both published quarterly by the ABS in Building Activity. Approvals are a leading indicator of what could be built. Completions are the only one of the three that adds to the housing stock, and they are the measure the Accord target is assessed against.
On the Council’s August forecasts, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT are each expected to reach their share in the December quarter of 2029. Queensland and South Australia are forecast for the March quarter of 2031, New South Wales for the March quarter of 2032, Tasmania for the June quarter of 2034, and the Northern Territory after 2034. Nationally the target is forecast for the December quarter of 2030. No jurisdiction is expected to reach its share within the Accord period, which ends in June 2029.
Related articles
For the wider picture on supply, capacity and market conditions across the sector, see the Australian Construction Industry Trends Guide.
Sources
National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, Quarterly Report August 2026. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Building Activity, Australia, March 2026.
Current as at 24 August 2026.
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Author: TGB Editorial
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