Building Approvals, Australia is the ABS’s monthly count of dwelling units and the value of building work approved. As at the August 2026 release, 16,953 dwellings were approved in the month, seasonally adjusted, 6.1% fewer than in July.
General informationThis page explains an official statistic, as the ABS publishes it. It is not advice about any building project, and it does not forecast building activity. The newest figures are on the ABS’s Building Approvals, Australia page.
What counts as an approval
The ABS defines a building approval as “the official permit that allows construction to begin”. The name for it differs between states: in New South Wales it is typically a Construction Certificate or a Complying Development Certificate, and in Victoria a Building Permit. Planning approvals and other preliminary permits granted during development do not allow construction to begin, so they are not counted.
Since July 1990 the count has taken in approved residential building valued at $10,000 or more and non-residential building valued at $50,000 or more. Roads, bridges, railways and earthworks are left out, because they are not buildings.
The figures come from local councils and other approving authorities, as a by-product of the ordinary approval process, and the collection is a census rather than a sample. Where a private certifier issues the approval, the details go through the reporting authority first, and that extra step can delay a month’s complete figures until the following month.
Three versions of every figure
The main series come in three forms: original, seasonally adjusted and trend. The headline numbers are the seasonally adjusted ones.
- Original
- The series as collected. The seasonally adjusted estimates are produced from it, taking account of the latest original figures.
- Seasonally adjusted
- The original series with the estimated effects of season and calendar removed, so other influences show more clearly. It does not remove irregular influences, such as one very large project being approved.
- Trend
- In the ABS’s words, “the medium to long direction of a time series.”
The seasonally adjusted and trend figures for the same month need not agree, and in August 2026 they often did not.
| State or territory | Seasonally adjusted, August | Trend, August |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Fell 6.1% | Fell 0.8% |
| New South Wales | Fell 17.3% | Fell 2.6% |
| Victoria | Rose 8.9% | Fell 1.8% |
| Queensland | Fell 22.5% | Rose 1.0% |
| South Australia | Rose 24.0% | Rose 2.9% |
| Western Australia | Rose 3.2% | Fell 0.1% |
| Tasmania | Fell 1.5% | Rose 2.5% |
| Northern Territory | Not published | Fell 6.4% |
| Australian Capital Territory | Not published | Fell 12.2% |
In Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania the two columns point opposite ways. The ABS does not publish seasonally adjusted estimates for the Northern Territory or the ACT. Each state’s series is adjusted on its own, separately from the national one.
Houses, and everything else
The release splits private sector approvals into houses and dwellings excluding houses, and in August 2026 they went opposite ways. Seasonally adjusted, approvals for private sector houses were up 3.7%, at 10,885, and those for private sector dwellings excluding houses were down 21.2%, at 5,674. In trend terms houses rose 0.5% and dwellings excluding houses fell 2.6%.
Whether an approval is private or public depends on who is meant to own the finished building at the time of approval, not on who pays for it. Social housing jointly funded by government is classed as private if the intended final owner is private.
For private sector houses alone, seasonally adjusted, South Australia (27.7%), Western Australia (8.6%), Queensland (6.5%) and Victoria (0.5%) rose in August 2026, and New South Wales (down 4.5%) was the only fall.
The value of what was approved
Seasonally adjusted, the value of residential building approved in August 2026 fell 0.6% to $11.30 billion: $10.02 billion of new residential work and $1.28 billion of alterations and additions. Non-residential building fell 44.8% to $5.53 billion, after rising 15.7% in July, while its trend estimate rose 2.0%.
These values are the estimated value of the work when completed, as written on the approval documents. In concept they leave out land, demolition and landscaping, and since July 2000 they include GST. The ABS says they are usually a reliable guide to the finished value of houses, but can differ significantly for other buildings, because final costs are often not settled when approval is sought.
Revisions and small areas
Building approvals are re-released every month, including revisions to earlier months. Late records, corrections from councils and approvals found only after work has started can all change a past month, and revisions are generally confined to the last 12 to 18 months. The seasonally adjusted figures can move too as new months arrive, though the revisions generally become smaller over time.
Figures for council areas use the boundaries in force when each approval was given, and boundaries are updated each July. Because the 2026 boundaries are not expected until October 2026, approvals from July to December 2026 are being published on the 2025 boundaries and will be updated in the January 2027 publication. The ABS also cautions that small-area estimates vary from month to month.
Some parts of the release come only every three months. Chain volume measures, which show the volume of building approved after the direct effects of price changes are removed, appear in the April, July, October and January issues, and demolition approvals in the March, June, September and December issues. The January 2027 publication will also move to the 2026 edition of the Australian Statistical Geography Standard, re-publishing small-area data back to July 2021 on the new boundaries.
An approval is a permit, not a finished home. The homes that are completed join the stock counted in the total value of dwellings, through the completions the ABS uses to update its dwelling count, and the loans taken out to build or buy them appear in the lending indicators.