Heather Duplessy-Allen

But then again, you know, these guys make the rules on this, don't they?

Quite right, and you can see why they want to, as you just explained.

Right, what's the deal with the building consents?

Yeah, back to the land of the long white cloud and something a little bit more understandable, local building consents.

And contrary to what you may think, given the drop that we've seen in consumer and business confidence, building consents just continue to trend higher.

So it's a reasonably positive signal, particularly for a sector, the construction sector.

It's been kind of challenged, hasn't it?

But it's actually been trending higher since the middle of 2025.

So it's a very, very clear rebound here.

in building consents.

Look, we're still a long way from the heady days of 2021, but definitely moving in a positive direction.

So on an annual basis, building consents are up 16% year on year.

That's for the 12 months to the end of April.

So a touch over 39,000 building consents.

Back in 2021, we were hitting a rate of about 50,000.

So we're nowhere near that

Monthly momentum is positive.

Remember, monthly numbers are quite volatile.

It was up 11% on a seasonally adjusted basis.

That represents over 50% of the annual growth as opposed to standalone homes.