INSIGHT · DEVELOPMENT & REPORTING
New houses took 2.80 quarters to build in 2025-26.
That is an average, without a spread.
The ABS reports that new houses in Australia took an average of 2.80 quarters from commencement to completion in the 2025-26 financial year, about 8.4 months (our calculation), down from an average of 3.47 quarters in 2023-24. By state, the 2025-26 average ran from 2.25 quarters in the Northern Territory to 3.41 quarters in Western Australia. The figures sit in an annual data cube released with Building Activity, Australia on 7 October 2026. The cube publishes averages only, in quarters, with no median or distribution.
Analysed 9 October 2026 · ABS Building Activity, Australia, June 2026, released 7 October 2026, and its Average dwelling completion times data cube · the same cube in the June 2025 edition, released 15 October 2025 · ABS feature article Average dwelling completion times, released 9 October 2019 · Building Activity methodology, June 2026 · all pages read 9 October 2026.
Key takeaways
- The national figure is an average in quarters: New houses: an average of 2.80 quarters from commencement to completion in 2025-26, about 8.4 months (our calculation: quarters multiplied by three). The ABS publishes the figure in quarters, by financial year, for houses, townhouses and apartments.
- The state range is more than a quarter wide: Average commencement-to-completion time for new houses in 2025-26: Western Australia 3.41 quarters, the ACT 3.32, South Australia 3.00, New South Wales 2.99, Tasmania 2.97, Queensland 2.52, Victoria 2.49 and the Northern Territory 2.25. The ordering is our calculation from the ABS table.
- Every state and territory is below its recent peak and above 2018-19: The national average for new houses was 2.22 quarters in 2018-19, peaked at 3.47 in 2023-24 and was 2.80 in 2025-26. Western Australia's average went from 5.19 quarters in 2023-24 to 3.41 in 2025-26; South Australia's from 4.04 to 3.00.
- The average excludes the longest jobs, and earlier years move: The 2019 ABS feature article on the measure excluded houses that took more than three years to complete. Between the October 2025 and October 2026 editions of the cube, the 2024-25 national figure for new houses moved from 3.07 to 3.06 quarters.
- We would store the definition with the number: A system-design recommendation: any build duration a programme or feasibility relies on is stored with its measure (average), unit (quarters), dwelling type, state, financial year and the edition it came from, beside the business's own spread of completed jobs.
01
The published average,
state by state.
Table 1 of the ABS Average dwelling completion times data cube gives new houses by average commencement to completion time, in number of quarters, for each financial year from 2015-16. For 2018-19, 2023-24 and 2025-26 it reports:
All values are averages for new houses, in quarters, by financial year, from the cube released 7 October 2026. The month column is our calculation (quarters multiplied by three, rounded to one decimal place); the ABS does not publish it.
| State or territory | 2018-19 (quarters) | 2023-24 (quarters) | 2025-26 (quarters) | 2025-26 in months (our calculation) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 2.37 | 3.39 | 2.99 | 9.0 |
| Victoria | 2.35 | 3.12 | 2.49 | 7.5 |
| Queensland | 1.73 | 2.71 | 2.52 | 7.6 |
| South Australia | 2.27 | 4.04 | 3.00 | 9.0 |
| Western Australia | 2.33 | 5.19 | 3.41 | 10.2 |
| Tasmania | 2.25 | 3.24 | 2.97 | 8.9 |
| Northern Territory | 1.89 | 2.43 | 2.25 | 6.8 |
| Australian Capital Territory | 2.49 | 3.97 | 3.32 | 10.0 |
| Australia | 2.22 | 3.47 | 2.80 | 8.4 |
02
What starts the clock,
and what stops it.
The 2019 feature article states that completion times are measured as the period, in quarters, between the commencement and completion of construction for a project creating new dwellings. The Building Activity glossary defines both events.
- Commenced: A building is commenced when the first physical building activity has been performed on site in the form of materials fixed in place and/or labour expended. The glossary states this includes site preparation but excludes delivery of building materials, the drawing of plans and specifications, and the construction of non-building infrastructure such as roads.
- Completed: A building is completed when building activity has progressed to the stage where the building can fulfil its intended function. The glossary does not tie this to a certificate, a handover or a contract milestone.
- The job is the unit, not the dwelling: When a job commences all associated dwelling units are considered to have commenced, and all dwelling units created by a job are considered complete when the job is completed. The glossary states that progress on individual dwelling units is not tracked.
- Approval to start is a separate clock: The ABS publishes average approval to commencement times in a second cube. For new houses in Australia that average was 0.75 quarters in 2025-26. It is not part of the 2.80 quarters.
03
Eleven financial years
in one series.
The national average for new houses held between 2.14 and 2.22 quarters in every financial year from 2015-16 to 2020-21. It then rose to 2.64 quarters in 2021-22, 3.34 in 2022-23 and 3.47 in 2023-24, before falling to 3.06 in 2024-25 and 2.80 in 2025-26.
In all eight states and territories the highest average in the cube falls in 2022-23 or 2023-24, and in all eight the 2025-26 average is lower than that peak and higher than the 2018-19 average (our comparison of the table). The largest fall from peak is Western Australia, 1.78 quarters, and the smallest rise since 2018-19 is Victoria, 0.14 quarters (both our calculation).
- The cube does not explain the movement: The data cube publishes the averages without commentary on causes. We do not attribute the rise or the fall to any factor.
- No counts or error margins sit beside the averages: The cube does not publish the number of jobs or a standard error for any figure, so how reliable each state average is cannot be read from the cube itself. That matters most for the smaller territories.
04
Townhouses and apartments
run on longer clocks.
Tables 2 and 3 of the same cube give the average for new townhouses and new apartments. Apartments are published for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland and for Australia only.
The 2019 feature article defines houses as detached buildings consisting of only one dwelling unit, townhouses as semi-detached row or terrace houses with their own private grounds and no dwelling above or below, and apartments as blocks of dwellings without their own private grounds that usually share a common entrance, foyer or stairwell.
| Dwelling type, 2025-26 | Australia (quarters) | Range across published states (quarters) |
|---|---|---|
| New houses | 2.80 | 2.25 (NT) to 3.41 (WA) |
| New townhouses | 3.74 | 2.71 (NT) to 4.40 (SA) |
| New apartments | 9.54 | 8.35 (Vic) to 10.54 (NSW) |
05
What an average
does not tell a programme.
An average answers the question a reader types into a search engine. It does not answer the question a programme or a feasibility has to answer, which is how long this job could take and how often a job runs much longer. Four features of the ABS measure matter for that.
- No spread is published: The cube contains three tables of averages. There is no median, no percentile and no count of jobs beside each figure, so the published series cannot say how many houses took twice the average.
- The slowest jobs are removed: The 2019 feature article states that houses or townhouses that took more than three years to complete, apartments that took more than five years, houses built in groups of more than 10 and townhouses built in groups of more than 25 were excluded; in that analysis 1.8% of houses were excluded. The current cube does not restate the rule.
- The unit is a quarter: Building Activity is a quarterly survey and the measure is published in quarters. The cube does not say how a job that starts and finishes within one quarter is counted, so the figure is not a day count.
- Earlier years are re-published: The 2024-25 national average for new houses was 3.07 quarters in the cube released 15 October 2025 and 3.06 in the cube released 7 October 2026; seven of the nine 2024-25 house figures differ between the two editions (our comparison). The 2019 article gave 2.17 quarters for 2016-17, against 2.14 in the current cube.
What we would put in a system
For each completed house job, and for any build duration a quote, programme or feasibility relies on, we would test for four fields.
Where agents help is narrow. A scheduling agent can read site diaries, inspection records and handover documents, propose the start and end dates for each job and draft the duration record, and a person confirms it. No agent decides why a job ran long, whether a delay is excusable, or whether any party is entitled to an extension of time; those are matters for the contract, the parties and their advisers.
| Field | Why it is load-bearing |
|---|---|
| Start event and its date | The ABS clock starts at the first physical building activity on site, including site preparation. A contract date, a permit date and a slab date give different durations for the same job. |
| End event and its date | The ABS clock stops when the building can fulfil its intended function. Practical completion, an occupancy certificate and handover are different events and should be named, not assumed. |
| The benchmark, with its definition | Figure, measure (average), unit (quarters), dwelling type, state, financial year and the release it came from, so a later edition with re-published years can be compared like for like. |
| The business's own spread | Median and slowest tenth of the business's own completed jobs, by dwelling type and region. This is a system-design recommendation; the ABS publishes no spread to compare it with. |
- Scheduling: Holds the start and end events for each job, so durations are measured the same way every time.
- Scheduling agent: Drafts dates from site records for a person to confirm.
- Reporting: Turns completed jobs into a median and a slow tail, beside the published average.
- How long planning consent takes in SA: The clock before the build clock, and which published figure measures it.
Questions worth asking
of your own records
For a builder: when you quote a build time, which event starts the clock?
If the quote runs from contract signing and the ABS average runs from first work on site, the two are not measuring the same period. The ABS reports part of that gap separately, as the average time from approval to commencement (0.75 quarters for new houses in 2025-26); it does not measure time from contract signing.
For a developer: which edition of which figure does a feasibility's construction period come from?
The 2024-25 national average for new houses has already been published as 3.07 and as 3.06 quarters. A feasibility that stores the figure without its edition cannot show which one it used.
For a building group across states: is the state difference visible in your own records?
The published 2025-26 averages for new houses range from 2.25 quarters in the Northern Territory to 3.41 in Western Australia. A group running jobs in several states can only compare its own regions against that range if each job carries its state and dwelling type.
For a project manager: can you produce the median and the slowest tenth of your own completed jobs?
The ABS publishes no spread, and its 2019 feature article on the measure excluded houses that took more than three years to complete. The slow tail of a business's own jobs is the part of the distribution a programme most needs and a public average cannot supply.
Questions people ask
about house build times in Australia
How long does it take to build a house in Australia?
The ABS reports that new houses took an average of 2.80 quarters from commencement to completion in the 2025-26 financial year, about 8.4 months (our calculation). The figure is from the Average dwelling completion times data cube released with Building Activity, Australia on 7 October 2026. It is an average; the ABS publishes no median or range.
Which state takes the longest to build a house?
In the 2025-26 financial year the average commencement-to-completion time for new houses was longest in Western Australia at 3.41 quarters and shortest (our ranking) in the Northern Territory at 2.25 quarters, according to the ABS cube released 7 October 2026. South Australia averaged 3.00 quarters, New South Wales 2.99, Victoria 2.49 and Queensland 2.52.
How long does it take to build an apartment building in Australia?
The ABS reports an average of 9.54 quarters from commencement to completion for new apartments in Australia in 2025-26, about 28.6 months (our calculation). It publishes state averages for New South Wales (10.54 quarters), Victoria (8.35) and Queensland (10.03) only.
Are house build times in Australia getting shorter?
The ABS average for new houses in Australia was 3.47 quarters in 2023-24, 3.06 in 2024-25 and 2.80 in 2025-26, against 2.22 in 2018-19. These are published averages for completed financial years; the ABS cube makes no statement about future years.
How does the ABS measure construction time?
The ABS measures completion time as the period, in quarters, between the commencement and completion of construction for a project creating new dwellings. A building is commenced at the first physical building activity on site, including site preparation, and completed when it can fulfil its intended function (Building Activity glossary, June 2026).
What this analysis
does and does not show.
Evidence note
- What it shows
- The ABS average commencement-to-completion time for new houses, townhouses and apartments by state and financial year, as published in the Average dwelling completion times data cube released 7 October 2026 with Building Activity, Australia, June 2026; the ABS definitions of commenced and completed; and what the published average leaves out for a programme. All pages read 9 October 2026.
- Key facts quoted
- New houses, Australia, average 2.80 quarters in 2025-26, 3.47 in 2023-24, 2.22 in 2018-19; 2025-26 state averages from 2.25 quarters (NT) to 3.41 (WA); new townhouses 3.74 and new apartments 9.54 quarters in 2025-26; approval to commencement for new houses 0.75 quarters in 2025-26; 2024-25 national house figure 3.07 in the October 2025 edition and 3.06 in the October 2026 edition; 2019 article exclusions of houses taking more than three years.
- The ABS publishes averages only. We have no median, percentile or job count for any figure, and make no statement about the share of jobs that ran long.
- The exclusion rules are quoted from the 2019 feature article. The current cube does not restate them, and we did not confirm that the same rules applied to the 2025-26 figures.
- The cube does not state whether a job is assigned to the financial year of its completion, or whether the average is taken across jobs or across dwellings. We do not assume either.
- Month figures, orderings and differences are our calculation from published quarters and are labelled as such.
- These are state and national figures. They do not describe any region within a state, any builder or any job, and they are not a forecast of any future year.
- Nothing here is legal or contractual advice, and it does not determine whether any delay is excusable or whether any extension of time is due.
What to watch next
- 13 January 2027: Building Activity, Australia, September 2026. The ABS states that final data for the June 2026 quarter will be released in that edition.
- The June quarter 2027 edition: The completion times cube is released annually with the June quarter edition of Building Activity. The ABS has not yet published a date for that edition; when it appears, earlier financial years may be re-published, as 2024-25 was in October 2026.
Bring us ten finished houses
and the build time you quote.
Send us the start and end dates of ten completed jobs, the events those dates record, and the build time your quotes and programmes assume. We will show you your own median and slow tail beside the ABS average, measured the same way.
General information about published ABS statistics. It is not legal, contractual or financial advice, and it does not determine whether any delay is excusable or any extension of time is due. Figures are Australian, by state and territory, as read on 9 October 2026 from the sources listed.
Sources
Suggested citation: ABS, Building Activity, Australia, June 2026, Average dwelling completion times data cube (released 7 October 2026), as read 9 October 2026. Derived figures: month equivalents (quarters multiplied by three), state orderings, differences from peak and from 2018-19, and the count of re-published 2024-25 figures, all our calculation.
- ABS - Building Activity, Australia, June 2026: Released 7 October 2026, 11:30am AEDT · read 9 October 2026 · national statistical office - quarterly release
- ABS - Building Activity Average dwelling completion times (data cube, June 2026 edition): Released 7 October 2026 · read 9 October 2026 · national statistical office - annual data cube, Tables 1 to 3
- ABS - Building Activity Average dwelling completion times (data cube, June 2025 edition): Released 15 October 2025 · read 9 October 2026 · national statistical office - previous edition, used for revisions
- ABS - Average dwelling completion times (feature article): Released 9 October 2019 · read 9 October 2026 · national statistical office - method and exclusions
- ABS - Building Activity, Australia methodology, June 2026: Released 7 October 2026 · read 9 October 2026 · national statistical office - glossary definitions