New Zealand’s builders put more work in place in the June 2026 quarter than in any quarter for two and a half years, and Canterbury has quietly set a record while it happened.
Figures released by Stats NZ on Friday morning show $8.15 billion of building work was put in place in the three months to June, up 5.2 percent on the same quarter a year earlier. It is the first time the annual comparison has been positive since the December 2023 quarter. Newswire’s calculations from the regional series published with the release show nine consecutive quarters of annual decline before this one, a run that began in March 2024 and bottomed out at a 14 percent fall in the December 2024 quarter.
Strip out seasonal patterns and construction cost inflation, which is how economists prefer to read the numbers, and the volume of building work rose 4.8 percent on the March quarter. Residential volumes rose 4.8 percent and non-residential volumes rose 3.3 percent. The Stats NZ release notes that residential volumes had slipped 0.1 percent in the March quarter and non-residential volumes had fallen 2.1 percent.
The non-residential turn is the more interesting half of that. Commercial and public building had fallen in every one of the eight quarters charted before this one, going back to June 2024, so a 3.3 percent quarterly rise breaks a two year losing streak. Whether it holds is another question, because the annual figures for that side of the industry are still going backwards. Non-residential work was worth $2.95 billion in the June quarter, down 3.4 percent on a year earlier. Residential work was worth $5.2 billion, up 11 percent.
Canterbury is the standout. The region recorded $1.439 billion of building work in the June quarter, up 13.9 percent on the same quarter last year. Newswire compared that against the full regional series Stats NZ publishes back to the June 2011 quarter and it is the highest figure for any quarter in the entire fifteen year run, ahead of the previous high of $1.402 billion set in the December 2023 quarter. That comparison is in plain dollars rather than adjusted for building cost inflation, so a record in cash terms is not the same as a record in bricks and timber. It is still a striking result for a region whose building industry was widely expected to fade once the earthquake rebuild finished.
Auckland remains by far the biggest market, with $3.207 billion of work in the quarter, up 3.7 percent. That is a long way off where the city was three years ago. Auckland’s peak in the same series was $3.868 billion in the September 2023 quarter, which puts the current quarter roughly 17 percent below the high water mark before any allowance for the cost increases since.
Wellington was the only region to go backwards, with $591 million of work put in place, down 8.9 percent on a year earlier. That is the weakest June quarter the capital has recorded since 2020, and the region has now been overtaken by Waikato, where $692 million of work was put in place, up 11.6 percent. Waikato first passed Wellington in the March 2026 quarter and has widened the gap since. Elsewhere, the rest of the North Island accounted for $1.3 billion, up 3.6 percent, and the rest of the South Island $970 million, up 6.2 percent.
The detail on what is actually being built shows where the pain still sits. Over the year to June, the largest non-residential categories were offices, administration and public transport buildings at $2.2 billion, down 4.1 percent, education buildings at $1.6 billion, down 0.5 percent, hospitals, nursing homes and health buildings at $1.6 billion, down 17 percent, and factories and industrial buildings at $1.6 billion, down 9.2 percent. Health building was the sharpest faller of the four.
Costs are still climbing, though nothing like the pace of a few years ago. Residential construction prices rose 1.4 percent in the June quarter and non-residential prices rose 0.9 percent, measured by the capital goods price index. That is a step up from the March quarter, when the same measures rose 0.5 percent and 0.3 percent, and it is a reminder that some of the extra dollars flowing through the industry are buying the same amount of building.
One caution worth carrying into any read of these numbers. Stats NZ says statistics remain provisional for the latest three quarters and are updated each quarter, and it revised the September 2025 quarter onwards this time to reflect better survey information. The revisions were not small. The March 2026 quarter was originally published in June as a 3.5 percent fall in seasonally adjusted volume, with residential down 2.2 percent and non-residential down 4.0 percent. In this release the same quarter is a 1.5 percent fall, with residential down only 0.1 percent. In other words, the slump early this year was shallower than it looked at the time, which takes some of the shine off the size of the June rebound.
None of this means the industry’s troubles are behind it. Construction has been the biggest single source of company failures through the downturn, and Newswire reported in June that liquidations across the economy hit an eleven year high with construction firms making up the largest share. Work put in place measures activity, not profitability, and a firm can be busy and still be losing money on jobs priced in a tighter market.
The figures matter beyond the building sites. Construction is one of the larger components of the production measure of gross domestic product, and the June quarter building numbers feed directly into it. Stats NZ has confirmed that gross domestic product for the June 2026 quarter will be released on 17 September, which will show whether a lift in building work was enough to move the wider economy. The next building work release, covering the September 2026 quarter, is due on 7 December.
Are you seeing more work on the ground in your region, or is it still quiet? Tell us what you are noticing in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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