New homes are no longer getting bigger

By Leith van Onselen

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released data on the average floor are of new dwellings, which revealed a small 1.9% decline in the year to 2012-13 (see below table).

According to the ABS:

There has been a steady increase in the average floor area of new residential dwellings over the 28 financial years to 2012-13. The average floor area of all new residential dwellings increased from 149.7m² to 207.6m² over this time, an increase of 38.7%. New houses increased from 162.4m² to 241.1m² (48.5%), while new other residential dwellings increased from 99.2m² to 133.9m² (35.0%).

Table 1 [above] shows an increase of 6.0m² (2.6%) in the average floor area of new houses over the ten financial years from 2003-04 to 2012-13. Conversely, the average floor area of new other residential and total new residential dwellings decreased by 8.6m² (6.0%) and 3.4m² (1.6%) respectively over this period.

While Australian new homes are often claimed to be the biggest in the world, there are reasons to view this claim with skepticism. Specifically, the ABS measures floor area as:

…the amount of useable space in a building (and its attachments) at the final stage of its construction and is measured in square metres (m²). The boundary of the recorded floor area of a building is delineated by the external perimeter of the exterior walls of the building. The area under unenclosed verandahs, carports, etc., attached outside the exterior walls of one or more storeys, is excluded.

Since the early-1990s, there has been an increasing trend towards attached garages (see example below), whereas previously most new houses built car ports instead.

Under the ABS’ definition, such garages would be included as floor space, whereas car ports are not. Accordingly, Australian home sizes have been biased upwards, giving the impression that we have super-sized our homes, even though actual living space has likely risen far more moderately.

It is also worth noting for comparative purposes that the United States – often regarded as having the second biggest new homes in the world – does not include attached garages in its floor area measurements.

Turning to the states, you can see that New South Wales has the biggest homes in Australia:

This phenomenon is likely due to New South Wales’ land prices being the most expensive in the nation, which gives buyers the incentive to “go large”, since up-sizing represents a relatively small additional cost in percentage terms.

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