By Isabel Vieira | posted on February 4, 2021
A SPIKE in new home builds has seen local contractors booked out for the next year while tradies try to keep up with booming demand.
Between September and December 2020, the City of Albany approved 399 building license requests to the value of $65,812,072.
In comparison to the previous year, the approval of an additional 126 builds within the four-month period resulted in an injection of $32 million dollars into the local economy.
The rise in building approvals is directly correlated to the State Government’s Building Bonus grant in conjunction with the Federal Government HomeBuilder grant, which provides home builders with up to $45,000 in funding.
The increase in demand has placed building contractors and trades under the pump, majority of whom are inundated with builds for the foreseeable future.
Ryde Building Company’s Operations Manager Iian Woods said it was the busiest period the company had ever seen.
“When Covid hit we cut some hours back on a few staff but as soon as the money was announced in June, everybody came back full-time,” he said.
“We went from having about 25 houses on the ground, to having 38 houses at the moment and 71 houses in prestart, waiting to begin construction.
“We build roughly 40-45 houses every year but we have about two years work ahead of us now.”
Some trades and suppliers are struggling to keep up with the growing number of home constructions as supply and demand continues to surge.
Mr Woods said the company was facing issues with sourcing concrete workers and bricklayers employees who are also inundated with work.
He said there’s also concern over the supply of construction materials.
“We are working closely with suppliers, as I know the brickmakers are going flat out,” he said.
“We suspect they may have issues with timber supplies, not only because of the supply and demand increase but because of the bushfires last year.
“They destroyed a lot of pine plantations, so I know they’re madly harvesting timber to get it into the system.”
City of Albany CEO Andrew Sharpe said the increase in building approvals was fantastic news for the local economy.
“It’s a big win for our local building industry and will positively impact local families, suppliers and businesses,” he said.
“Albany is an amazing place to live so to see families and individuals investing their money, time and effort into building a home here is wonderful and exciting for the City to be a part of their journey.”
Mr Woods’ advice for aspiring home builders was to wait out the influx of builds over the next six-months so your home construction can flow a lot smoother.
“It normally takes about 20-22 weeks to build a project style home, but we are going to be closer to taking 30-plus weeks now,” he said.
