Calvin Davidson

But I guess, you know, in a sector where competition is heating up, maybe a bit more demand, you would anticipate that we'd see a bit more price growth.

But, you know, the downturn has been been pretty deep and pretty prolonged that we're still going to be operating a bit below capacity, I think.

So, yeah, a bit more cost growth.

you know like i say do we see that return to to the postcode spike seems unlikely i mean think about the plasterboard shortages and all of the wage pressure we had back then you know it was a pretty crazy time so i guess just a bit more stability and i guess most people probably say that's a good thing you know allows uh home buyers to be a bit more certain about their projects that you know costs aren't going to sort of run away on them in the meantime and also builders can be more certain about quoting you know so so i guess a bit of certainty and stability is

Probably a good thing for an industry that sort of needs it after a deep downturn.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

And I think the point there is that, yes, you know, we've had a deep downturn in dwelling consents and, you know, it's not the only measure of construction activity, but it's sort of slightly forward looking and it's one that people watch.

It's easy to measure.

So, you know, it's been a pretty deep downturn.

But as you say, that's sort of 33 and a half, 34, now up to 36,000 on an annual basis.

That's still really high compared to the past.

So, you know, we've, yes, it's been a deep downturn, but we've still got a flow of

properties coming through and you know we're maybe seeing that in for example the weakness of property rents right now you know that the market has seen the physical stock of housing go up and rents are either flat or falling your house prices you know flat or falling so you know i think it just goes to show what you what you can do when yep we've we've seen construction activity fall away but we're still adding supply and shows what what you can do when when you get supplies so um

Yeah, and we get a pickup from here.

Great news for sort of economic activity and also that housing affordability.

Yeah, I mean, those retail sales figures, I guess we've got to be a wee bit cautious with timing because, you know, this whole spending period now, it's, you know, you've got the Black Friday and through to Boxing Day.

I mean, has just the timing of those things shifted, you know, has actually

sales that would have ordinarily happened around boxing day have kind of been pulled forward because black friday's becoming more more prominent um so there's this whole sort of whole spending period rather than looking at a couple of isolated events it might be shifting the timing so yeah i guess we've got to be a little bit careful with that but yeah stats new zealand update some some general figures around their electronic card spending uh this thursday i think so we'll we'll get another update i guess that consumer part of the economy but

um what we've already had yeah last week was was pretty good i mean we had the manufacturing pmi performance manufacturing index from bnz and business nz uh 56.1 now 50 on that index is the sort of rise fall mark so anything above 50 is a strong expansion and the higher you get above 50 the stronger it gets so so 56.1 yeah i mean you know great number is the highest since december 2021