New house building: July to September 2022

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, publications of the quarterly New House Building in Wales reports were suspended following publication of the quarterly report covering October to December 2019. The quarterly new house building publication for April to June 2022 saw the reintroduction of the report. The July to September 2022 data has been compared with the previous quarter and the July to September 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), a private approved inspector. Tenure data should be treated with caution (see notes).

New dwellings started

• 1,300 new dwellings were started during July to September 2022, 25% less than the same quarter of 2019 and 6% higher than the previous quarter (April to June 2022).

New dwellings completed

• 1,339 new dwellings were completed this quarter (July to September 2022), 4% lower than the same quarter of 2019 and 16% lower than the previous quarter (April to June 2022).
• The number of completed 4 or more bedroom properties this quarter was 320, which was 13% lower than the same quarter of 2019 and 15% lower than the previous quarter, accounting for 24% of all completed dwellings.
• The number of completed 3-bedroom properties this quarter was 546, largely unchanged from the 544 properties for the same quarter of 2019 and 3% lower than the previous quarter, accounting for 41% of all completed dwellings.
• The number of completed 2-bedroom properties this quarter was 285 which was 6% higher than the same quarter of 2019 but 27% lower than the previous quarter, accounting for 21% of all completed dwellings.
• The number of completed 1-bedroom properties this quarter was 188 which was 11% lower than the same quarter of 2019 and 27% lower than the previous quarter, accounting for 14% of all completed dwellings.

New dwellings completed by tenure

Splits by tenure 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).

• Compared to the same quarter of 2019, the proportion of completions which were for the private sector increased, from 79% to 83%
• The number of completions for local authorities has risen considerably, from 6 dwellings to 77; this is the second highest completions for local authorities recorded since 2010-11, equating to 6% of completions in this quarter
• The proportion of completions for RSLs was down by almost a half (21% to 11%)
• Compared to the previous quarter, completions were lower across all tenures; of the 1,339 completions, 1,113 were private sector completions (7% lower), 149 RSL (48% lower) and 77 local authority (25% lower).

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.

Headline figures and StatsWales data are published quarterly and a report is published annually. The information published on StatsWales includes local authority level data as well as the number of new dwellings completed by dwelling type and number of bedrooms.