21290 – Construction Completion Lag

Node 21290 measures how long the stock of dwellings under construction is taking to clear. It divides the number of dwellings under construction by the number completed in the quarter and multiplies by three, giving the months of work the pipeline is carrying at the current rate of completion. A longer reading means the pipeline is clearing more slowly relative to its size.

Construction Completion Lag (21290) is a contributing input to Economic Factors (APN Aggregate Macro-Volatility Index™) (21200), carrying a weighting of 0.05 — the smallest weighting in the composite, alongside Household Finance & Spending (21240).

Construction Completion Lag (21290) measures how long the build pipeline takes to clear. It does not measure the cost of building, which is the domain of Construction Costs & Supply Chain (21260), nor the volume of approvals or forecast supply, which sits in the 21500 series (New Housing Supply Forecasts, 21520).

Primary metric: Node Composite Z-Score (Z₂₁₂₉₀) — months of pipeline, standardised by quarter of the year

Unlike most nodes in this series, where the certified Z-score is calculated node-side from raw baseline values, the Z-score of Construction Completion Lag (21290) is calculated upstream and passed through to the node as a single precomputed composite reading — the standardisation work happens before the figure reaches the node level, rather than being recomputed here. The underlying input series carries full weight within the node, which in turn contributes at 0.05 weighting into the 21200 AMVI composite.

Construction Completion Lag (21290) draws on two series from a single Tier-1 institutional source, ABS Building Activity, Australia, combined as described above. Both are Total Sectors, Original, from the June quarter 2026 release, which also revised the March quarter.

Baseline. Estimated over September 1984 to September 2025, separately for each quarter of the year, on sample standard deviations. The node carries a weighting of 0.05 in the 21200 AMVI composite.

Baseline: estimated separately for each quarter of the year, September 1984 to September 2025  ·  Terminal: Q2 2026

Quarterly record, Jun 2025 – Jun 2026, on the current basis:

On the current basis the five quarters to June 2026 read +2.248σ, +1.875σ, +2.214σ, +2.020σ and +2.020σ. All five sit well above the average for their own quarter of the year, and the reading has held above 1.5 standard deviations in every quarter since September 2021, without a sustained direction within that band. The March quarter 2026 reads +2.020σ on the June 2026 release, which revised that quarter’s completions and dwellings under construction.

The certified reading of +2.0205σ (Q2 2026) indicates the construction pipeline clearing materially more slowly than is usual for a June quarter: it carried 15.7 months of work at the June 2026 rate of completion, against a June-quarter average of 9.3 months since 1984.

Position. 90.4, ranked against 84 quarters of the node’s record, with 75 of the 83 comparable quarters below it.

The reading has held above 1.5 standard deviations in every quarter since the September quarter 2021. Because a pipeline carrying more months of work implies longer build durations for projects entering it, the node is relevant to holding-cost and sequencing assumptions in development feasibility work.

This node should not be read as a construction-input-cost signal — that role sits with Construction Costs & Supply Chain (21260) — nor as a signal of approval volumes or new-supply forecasting, which sits with New Housing Supply Forecasts (21520) in the separate 21500 series.

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.

The other eight components of Economic Factors (APN Aggregate Macro-Volatility Index™) (21200).