21520 – New Housing Supply Forecasts

New Housing Supply Forecasts (21520) measures the depth and throughput of the residential construction pipeline already in motion — the stock of dwellings currently under construction, the residential-only dollar value of work still to be completed on projects already underway, and the residential-only value of construction work actually completed each quarter. Where Building Approvals & Commencements (21510) measures the rate new supply enters the pipeline, New Housing Supply Forecasts (21520) measures how much supply is already inside it, how far from completion that supply sits, and how much of it is being delivered.

The node’s Work Yet To Be Done and Work Done vectors are scoped to residential building activity only, distinct from total building activity, which also includes commercial, industrial and institutional construction.

Primary metric: Node Composite Z-Score (Z₂₁₅₂₀)

Metric typology: weighted three-vector composite index. Each vector is normalised against its own 15-year baseline and expressed as an independent Z-score. The composite weights each economic dimension of the pipeline equally: the pipeline queued — dwellings under construction and work yet to be done, 0.25 each — and pipeline throughput — work done, 0.50.

Measurement character. The Work Yet To Be Done vector reflects residential-only construction activity, against a baseline of μ = $41,997.20m, σ = $15,178.70m. The Work Done vector is the seasonally adjusted, chain-volume measure of residential construction work completed in the quarter.

All three vectors are Tier-1 sovereign sources; no commercial data dependency exists in the node.

Baseline period: 15-year window, 2011 to 2025  ·  Frequency: Quarterly  ·  N: 60 per vector

At +1.8182σ (Q2 2026), the composite indicates a construction pipeline running materially above its 15-year historical depth, and higher than in any earlier quarter of its record. The Work Yet To Be Done vector (+2.8154σ, $84.7 billion) is the strongest of the three signals — residential builders are carrying a larger backlog of contracted, unfinished work relative to history than either the stock of dwellings under construction (+1.3775σ, 248,733 dwellings, itself the highest on record) or the quarterly value of work actually completed (+1.5400σ) would suggest on their own. Work done is itself running above its mean, so the backlog is not the product of a stalled sector: output is elevated, and the value of work still queued behind it is elevated further. Read together with Building Approvals & Commencements (21510), where the front-of-pipeline flow has risen to about half a standard deviation above its own mean, the combination points to an existing pipeline that is deep, costly to complete and slow to clear, and that is still being added to.

Position. 100.0, ranked against 168 quarters of the node’s record in which all three inputs are present: the current reading is the highest in that record, so the Z-score is the more informative of the two figures.

This node is not itself an input to any 24000-series instrument. The reading above draws on one of its source series, so it moves with part of this node’s input. Pipeline Congestion (24744), in the same branch, reads the value of total building work yet to be done, residential and non-residential together; this node reads the residential value only, so the two are different measures.

The other three components of Construction & Development Pipeline Analysis (21500).

New Housing Supply Forecasts (21520) holds Active status. All three vectors and the composite are certified against Tier-1 ABS sources. The Work Yet To Be Done and Work Done vectors are scoped to residential-only construction activity throughout.