Work started on 52,201 dwellings in Australia in the June 2026 quarter, in seasonally adjusted terms, according to Building Activity, Australia, June 2026, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on 7 October. That was 7.0% more than in the March quarter and 14.4% more than in the June quarter of 2025. The total covers both private and public sector building.

New houses drove the increase. Private sector new house commencements rose 11.6% to 31,707 in seasonally adjusted terms, after a 1.3% fall in the March quarter, and were 20.7% higher than a year earlier. Private sector commencements of other residential dwellings, the ABS category that includes apartments and townhouses, fell 0.1% to 19,126, after a 20.6% fall in the March quarter. They were 4.6% higher than a year earlier.

Completions rose as well. The ABS counted 47,168 dwellings completed in the June quarter in seasonally adjusted terms, up 5.8% on the March quarter. In original terms, 47,653 dwellings were completed, 15.8% more than in the June quarter of 2025, and 248,733 were under construction in the June quarter, 95,447 of them new houses.

Victoria started work on 16,239 dwellings in the June quarter in seasonally adjusted terms, up from 14,128 in the March quarter, while New South Wales started 11,252, down from 11,907.

The value of total building work done, which covers new homes, residential alterations and additions, and non-residential building, rose 1.1% to A$45.8 billion in the June quarter. That figure is seasonally adjusted and measured in chain volume terms, with 2023-24 as the reference year.

The figures are not final. The ABS says the data are based on a response rate of approximately 85% of the value of building work done during the quarter, which is lower than the long-term response rate average. The data are subject to revision when the next quarter's survey responses are processed, and the ABS will release final data for the June 2026 quarter in the next edition of the publication on 13 January 2027.

For international investors, the release is Australia's official count of new homes being started, finished and still under construction, which shows how much new housing is being added to the country's stock.

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Sources

Sources read 8 October 2026.