New house building: April to June 2022

This is the reintroduction of the quarterly New House Building in Wales report which was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic with the last published quarterly report covering the period of October to December 2019. Where comparisons have been made with previous quarterly data this has been done with the April to June quarter of 2019, prior to the pandemic.

The information is based on the reports of local authority building inspectors and the National House Building Council (NHBC). Tenure data should be treated with caution (see notes).

New dwellings started

• 1,232 new dwellings were started during April to June 2022, 27% less than the same quarter of 2019.

New dwellings completed

• 1,591 new dwellings were completed during April to June 2022, broadly the same as for April to June 2019.
• The number of completed 3-bedroom properties decreased by 13% (to 565 properties) compared to the same quarter of 2019 and accounted for 36% of all completed dwellings.
• The number of completed 2-bedroom properties was up by 3% (to 390 properties) on the same quarter of 2019 and accounted for 25% of all completed dwellings.
• The number of completed 1-bedroom properties was up by 89% (to 259 properties) on the same quarter of 2019 and accounted for 16% of all completed dwellings.

New dwellings completed by tenure

This split should be treated with caution as they are believed to include an undercount of social sector and local authority new builds, but an overcount of private sector and RSL (see notes).

• 75% of completions during this quarter were reported to be in the private sector, 18% were by RSLs and the remaining 6% by local authorities.
• Completions in both the private sector and by RSLs were lower in this quarter than for the same quarter in 2019; however, there was an increase in completions by local authorities with these representing 6% of all completions this quarter compared to 0.4% in the same quarter of 2019.

Notes

Due to rounding, some figures may not add up to 100%.

This data is based on the reports of local authority building inspectors and the National House Building Council (NHBC) a private approved inspector. It does not include information from other private approved inspectors. It is sometimes difficult for building control officers and NHBC to identify the intended final tenure of the property (the basis for the tenure information). This may lead to an under-count of social sector new house building and an over-count for the private sector. Within the social sector it may also lead to an under-count of local authority new house building and an over count for the RSL sector. Therefore, the tenure data should be treated with caution.

Both starts and completions will be influenced by quarterly fluctuations including the timing of starts and completions on large sites in some authorities and seasonal factors such as holidays and weather. These statistics are not seasonally adjusted.

We also publish separate statistics on affordable housing provision. The figures cover all additional affordable housing units, whether through new build, purchase, acquisition, leasing or conversion of existing dwellings.