Australia’s residential approvals pipeline has spent the past four years moving through a full cycle rather than a flat trend — a shape that only becomes visible once the observation window stretches back far enough to show a trough, not just a partial recovery. Newly extended APN Codex data, now running continuously from July 2022 to May 2026, makes that cycle visible at national and state grain for the first time.
The national shape
New residential dwelling approvals, aggregated from LGA-level ABS 8731.0 data (new dwellings, total sectors, quarterly), moved from a trough of 36,180 in the January–March 2023 quarter to a peak of 50,997 in the July–September 2025 quarter — a rise of 41.0% across the recovery. Approval value grew faster still, from $16.5 billion to $26.9 billion across the same window, a 63% increase, implying the average value per approved dwelling rose alongside volume.
The full quarterly series, trough to most recent complete quarter, is set out below for reference.
| Quarter | Dwellings approved | Value ($m) |
|---|---|---|
| Q3 2022 | 48,965 | 21,156 |
| Q4 2022 | 45,601 | 19,975 |
| Q1 2023 (trough) | 36,180 | 16,545 |
| Q2 2023 | 40,712 | 18,795 |
| Q3 2023 | 39,948 | 18,112 |
| Q4 2023 | 40,441 | 19,135 |
| Q1 2024 | 36,282 | 17,658 |
| Q2 2024 | 41,056 | 19,792 |
| Q3 2024 | 45,770 | 22,885 |
| Q4 2024 | 47,512 | 23,393 |
| Q1 2025 | 44,091 | 22,484 |
| Q2 2025 | 46,785 | 24,173 |
| Q3 2025 (peak) | 50,997 | 26,903 |
| Q4 2025 | 49,526 | 27,075 |
| Q1 2026 | 46,625 | 26,904 |
Volume recovered faster than value, then value caught up
Dwelling volume and approval value did not move in lockstep across the cycle. Average approval value per dwelling rose from approximately $457,300 in the Q1 2023 trough to approximately $527,600 in the Q3 2025 peak — a 15.4% increase in average value per approved dwelling, on top of the 41.0% increase in the number of dwellings themselves. Combined, these two effects produced the 63% rise in total approval value cited above. Whether that 15.4% reflects construction cost inflation, a shift in dwelling mix toward higher-specification product, or some combination of both is not something this dataset resolves on its own — it would need to be read alongside a construction cost index and a typology breakdown to separate those explanations. What the data does establish cleanly is that value grew for two separate reasons at once, not one.
Notably, value did not soften in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 the way volume did. Total approval value in Q1 2026 ($26,904m) was effectively identical to the Q3 2025 peak ($26,903m), even as dwelling volume fell from 50,997 to 46,625 over the same two quarters. Average value per dwelling therefore continued rising through the recent volume pullback, reaching roughly $577,000 by Q1 2026. A softening in the number of approvals alongside continued growth in value per approval is a different pattern from a broad-based downturn, and is worth distinguishing from one in how this period gets read going forward.
The recent pullback is not evenly distributed either
The two-quarter softening from the Q3 2025 peak is itself uneven across states, and one state is not softening at all.
| State | Q3 2025 (peak) | Q1 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western Australia | 5,874 | 6,692 | +13.9% |
| South Australia | 3,640 | 3,423 | −6.0% |
| Victoria | 14,603 | 13,602 | −6.9% |
| Queensland | 12,384 | 10,940 | −11.7% |
| Tasmania | 688 | 571 | −17.0% |
| New South Wales | 13,630 | 11,288 | −17.2% |
| Northern Territory | 178 | 109 | −38.8% |
Western Australia — already the fastest-growing state across the full recovery cycle — is the only state still climbing through the two quarters where every other state eased back. Its momentum has not merely held; approvals were 13.9% higher in Q1 2026 than at the Q3 2025 national peak. New South Wales and Tasmania recorded the largest pullbacks in percentage terms among the states with a robust base, while the Northern Territory’s −38.8% sits on a small enough base (178 to 109 dwellings) to treat as indicative rather than a reliable trend signal in its own right. This state-level split means the “early signal, not yet a confirmed turn” framing above needs a further qualification: it describes a national aggregate softening driven mainly by the eastern states, sitting alongside a Western Australian market that, on this data, has not turned at all.
Why this reading was not possible before now
The underlying LGA-grain table previously ran only from July 2024, a 23-month window that captured the tail of the recovery without its starting point. Extending the series back to July 2022 — using the ASGS 2021 boundary vintage consistent with APN’s existing geography correspondence work — is what makes trough-to-peak measurement possible at all. A shorter window would show only the climb, not the cycle.
A divergence by state
The recovery was not evenly distributed. Measured on the same trough-to-peak basis, Western Australia grew fastest by a wide margin, while Tasmania was essentially flat across the whole period.
| State | Trough (Q1 2023) | Peak (Q3 2025) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western Australia | 3,139 | 5,874 | +87.1% |
| New South Wales | 8,936 | 13,630 | +52.5% |
| Northern Territory | 126 | 178 | +41.3% |
| South Australia | 2,598 | 3,640 | +40.1% |
| Queensland | 9,332 | 12,384 | +32.7% |
| Victoria | 11,373 | 14,603 | +28.4% |
| Tasmania | 676 | 688 | +1.8% |
Victoria’s placement here is worth noting on its own: a cluster of inner-Melbourne LGAs recorded some of the largest percentage gains of any local government area nationally over this period, yet Victoria’s statewide growth rate sits below every mainland state except Queensland. The state-level number and the standout LGA-level results are both accurate — they describe different things. A narrow, intense recovery in a handful of inner LGAs can coexist with broader softness across the rest of the state, and Victoria’s approvals data over this period shows exactly that pattern.
