Victoria's Top Builders Improve Market Share

Victoria ’s largest builders have increased their market share over the past financial year, HIA’s Housing 100 report shows, thanks largely to federal and state grants for first home buyers.

The residential construction sector was quite weak last year with new dwelling starts in Victoria remaining flat in 2008/09. There were 41,818 new home starts in Victoria in 2008/09.

But the report found the market share of the largest 20 builders in Victoria increased from 28 per cent in 2007/08 to 32 per cent in 2008-09, thanks largely to boosted federal and state grants for first home buyers building or purchasing new homes.

Victoria ’s top 20 builders built 13,282 dwellings in 2008/09, compared with 11,727 dwellings in 2007/08.

Metricon Homes was the state’s largest builder over the year with 1794 starts (see table at the end of the release).

Simonds Group moved to second place with 1606 starts. In third place was Porter Davis Homes with 1342 starts.

HIA’s Victorian Executive Director Gil King said that while the increase in market share among the largest 20 builders was good news, it was disappointing that actual new home starts had remained flat.

“Victoria’s population is rapidly growing, so we must continually increase the number of new homes being built in our state,” Mr King said.

“HIA is concerned that State Government levies on new housing and a host of extra regulations on industry could thwart recent efforts to speed up residential construction, and instead see the re-emergence of housing shortages,” he said.