New house building: July to September 2019

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

• 1,724 new dwellings were started during July to September 2019, 2% more than during the previous three months and 20% more than the same quarter of 2018.
• 6,134 new dwellings were started between October 2018 and September 2019, up 4% on the period October 2017 to September 2018.

New dwellings completed

• 1,391 new dwellings were completed during July to September 2019, 13% less than the previous 3 months but 7% more than the same quarter of 2018.
• Between October 2018 and September 2019, 5,905 new dwellings were completed, down by 2% on the period October 2017 to September 2018.
• The number of completed 3 bedroom properties increased by 3% compared to the same quarter of 2018 and accounted for 39% of all completed dwellings.
• The number of completed 2 bedroom properties was down by 5% on the same quarter of 2018 year and accounted for 19% 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 Registered Social Landlords (RSL) (see notes).

• 79% of completions during this quarter were reported to be in the private sector, 21% were by RSLs and 0.4% were by local authorities.
• Between October 2018 and September 2019, private sector completions were down 10% compared with the period October 2017 to September 2018 whilst RSL completions were up 44%.

Notes

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.

The decreases in 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.