Page 6 - HW FEBRUARY 2022

editorial
HWJ - Cover - Feb 2022 - SKC - Sika Key.indd 1 21/01/2022 10:46:51 AM
NZ Hardware Journal is published 11 times per year (monthly except for January)
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Can we cope?
JUST AS WE went to print with this magazine, Stats NZ released year end numbers that put residential consents at almost 50,000 dwellings for the 2021 calendar year.
Actually, that’s almost 49,000 (to be precise 48,899) new homes consented in the year ended December 2021, +24% on the 2020 year.
The previous highest annual number of new homes consented was 40,025 in the year ended February 1974, a record that stood for no less than 47 years until YTD March 2021 when 41,028 new homes were consented.
Surely these are halcyon days for the building industry and therefore for the hardware channel?
But can the industry cope with this level of activity?
According to Stats NZ, prices for the construction of new dwellings increased by no less than 16% in the December 2021 quarter.
Then there’s the sheer availability of products, at any price.
Supply remains an obstacle for many retailers and merchants.
I’ve heard tales of core building materials, like say plasterboard to avoid the use of brand names, arriving at a
merchant for general availability but ending up being delivered straight to site, straight from the supplier’s flatbed.
An on to it builder, desperate to get his latest project to the next stage, flashed a few notes to the driver, paid the merchant their asking price and off they went.
And, with other recent stats putting unemployment at record lows – and with the borders not yet reopened to skilled imports – the industry remains critically short of skilled construction workers.
This in turn is making for an uber-tight labour market which is further adding to construction cost pressures.
For builders working on fixed price contacts, all this will come at a cost, literally, and some have even been switching to spec building as a result, I hear.
“It’s not a happy situation. I don’t quite know how long it can keep going this way,” is the opinion of one usually well- informed pundit who wished to remain nameless.
Coping is one thing, the key will be how long can a stretched industry continue to cope?
And will the expected influx of cashed-up expat Kiwis exacerbate an already edgy housing market, thereby bringing additional pressures to bear?
I’ll probably look back on this Editorial in a year’s time with a wry smile, with the industry having survived not another boom or bust but a potential boom and bust scenario.
Hope so.
Happy new year by the way.
Steve Bohling, editor steveb@mpm.nz
4 NZHJ | FEBRUARY 2022
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