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Building figures flat amid New Zealand housing crisis

Xinhua, June 30, 2016 Adjust font size:

Building consents for new homes have leveled off as New Zealand struggles to cope with a housing crisis, figures from the government statistics agency showed Thursday.

Building consents for new dwellings in May were at a higher level than in 2015, but there had been little growth in recent months, according to Statistics New Zealand.

"The trend for new stand-alone houses is increasing, but for all dwellings is flat," business indicators senior manager Neil Kelly said in a statement.

Last month 2,520 new dwellings were consented, down 0.9 percent from April.

In the year to the end of May, 28,387 new homes were consented, up 13 percent from the May 2015 year, and an 11-year high.

Most of the growth was in Auckland, home to a third of the population and the center of New Zealand's housing shortage, and nearby regions.

Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith said the construction sector was booming, with strong residential and commercial building activity across the country.

"The level of residential building activity in Auckland of 4.3 billion NZ dollars (3.05 billion U.S. dollars) and nationwide of 11.4 billion NZ dollars (8.08 billion U.S. dollars) is an all-time high in actual and inflation-adjusted terms," Smith said in a statement.

The growth in Auckland of 26 percent in the past year in residential building was "about as fast as a sector can grow," he said.

"This continues the longest and strongest period of growth in residential construction in New Zealand history," said Smith.

However, the opposition Green Party said the number of new building consents in Auckland had been in decline since November last year.

"The number of total new dwelling consents in Auckland has fallen since November, down from 966 to 732 consents in May," Green Party co-leader James Shaw said in a statement.

Shaw said the government's solution to the housing crisis of letting the private sector build more homes was not working, and a state-sponsored building program was needed.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has repeatedly warned that soaring home prices in Auckland pose a risk to the country's financial stability. Endit