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How to see where new homes are being approved to be built in Housing Monitor

Use the Housing Supply section of a council's Housing Monitor site to see where residential building approvals are located across the local government area, and how the number and type of dwellings approved has changed over time.

 Note: This data counts dwellings, not permits and not buildings. One permit for a block of 50 apartments counts as 50 dwellings. It also counts dwellings approved, not dwellings built: a dwelling enters the data when its building permit (not planning permit) is granted. Dwellings created by alterations or additions to an existing dwelling are not counted, and neither are dwellings created by work that is largely non-residential, such as a caretaker's residence built as part of a new hospital. 

Where to find the data

    1. Open the Housing Supply section: on your council's Housing Monitor site, select 'Housing Supply' in the left-hand navigation menu. It expands in place to show four sub-items.
    2. Go to the approvals map: select 'Where is new building happening?' in the expanded menu. The page moves to the section headed 'Where are building approvals located?'.
      Screenshot showing the Housing Supply page in Housing Monitor 
    3. Choose a dwelling type: select 'Total', 'Houses' or 'Other' below the map caption. 'Houses' covers detached buildings holding one dwelling, including kit and transportable homes. 'Other' covers semi-detached, row or terrace houses, townhouses, flats, units and apartments.
    4. Set the period you want: use the two dropdowns in the caption line above the map to set the first and last quarter. Each quarter ends at the end of the month named, so 'Mar 2026' covers 1 January to 31 March 2026. The period a dwelling falls into is set by when its building permit was granted, not by when work starts or finishes.
    5. Read an individual area: hover the cursor over a shaded area on the map to see its SA1 code and its approvals count. SA1s are small statistical areas based on the 2021 Census boundaries. Not every approval can be coded accurately to an SA1, so adding SA1 counts together will usually give slightly less than the whole council total.
    6. Check the whole-council trend: scroll up to 'How are residential building approvals tracking?' to see approvals by financial year, split into 'Houses' and 'Other types'. The final column covers the current financial year to date only, so it isn't comparable with the complete years beside it.

    What this tells you

    You'll have three views of residential building approval activity, and each one supports a different question.

    • The map shows which small areas approvals are concentrated in over the period you chose, so you can see where new residential development is being approved across y area.
    • The dwelling type buttons show whether those approvals are for detached houses or for units (semi-detached, terrace and apartment dwellings), so you can see what form the approved development is taking.
    • The trend chart shows how many dwellings have been approved in each financial year. Approvals are a leading indicator of the general level of residential development, economic activity, employment and investment, so the trend gives an early read on where development activity is heading. Numbers can move sharply from one year to the next, partly because construction projects are short term and the industry is cyclical, so read the direction over several years rather than a single jump.

    NOTE: Approval numbers are sometimes revised by ABS in later quarterly updates.

    If something doesn't look right

    • A chart or the map is blank. Charts on this page draw as they scroll into view. Scroll the section fully into view and give it a moment to render.
    • The map looks emptier after you change the period. The colour legend rescales to whatever period you select, so a shorter period shows lighter shading and lower counts. That's expected, not missing data.

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