April 29th, 2026HIA Housing scorecard
“Western Australia retained its status as Australia’s strongest home building market, even extending its lead, atop HIA’s latest Housing Scorecard,” stated HIA Senior Economist Tom Devitt.
HIA’s Housing Scorecard benchmarks contemporary levels of activity in each state and territory against long term averages across indicators of home building and renovations activity, lending data and population flows.
“Western Australia’s home building recovery has produced the strongest detached housing sector in the nation, the equal strongest renovations sector, and the equal second strongest multi-units market,” added Mr Devitt.
“Activity has been supported by the most impressive migration dynamics in the nation, with tens of thousands of arrivals each year from both overseas and interstate.
“Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia filled out the top three spots of the Housing Scorecard, comfortably ahead of the other jurisdictions, leading the national recovery across most individual indicators of housing and renovations activity.
“New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory sat in the middle of the pack in this Housing Scorecard. All three jurisdictions are still seeing relatively weak volumes of new home building entering the pipeline.
“Nonetheless, underlying demand for housing in these jurisdictions is being supported by the continued inflow of overseas migrants. Moreover, signs of strengthening activity in these markets are expected to continue through 2026 and beyond.
“Rounding out the Housing Scorecard are the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania, both struggling to get off the bottom of the list for a number of years now.
“Both jurisdictions underperformed on a number of indicators of detached housing, multi-unit and renovations activity. Local residents continue to leave for other states and territories, while Tasmania is also the only jurisdiction receiving fewer net overseas migrant arrivals than their decade average.
“It is arguably too soon to see sustained evidence of recovery in Tasmania’s approvals or building activity data, and only early signs in the Australian Capital Territory,” concluded Mr Devitt.
