Approvals vs completions: reading the supply pipeline

Walk the project down the funnel and stop at the last rung you can evidence.

• Planning application lodged.
• Planning approval or permit, with conditions and a lapse clock that differs by state and can be extended.
• Building approval (the ABS “building approval” if it meets the collection’s value threshold).
• Commencement: first physical work on site. For a 25-apartment job, ABS counts 25 commencements when the job starts.
• Under construction.
• Completion of the job. All dwellings in the job are counted complete together.
• Occupied. Not in Building Activity.

A dual occupancy and a staged estate do not share a duration. Do not write a national months-to-complete figure. Read the status on that notice, then look at the site.

Planning permission answers whether the use and built form can be applied for under the scheme. Building approval answers whether the construction documents meet the building rules. A project can sit for a long time with one and not the other. The monthly ABS series is building approvals. The map on a Districts property page is usually planning applications. See this lot’s DA history.

Pre-sales can fall short. Construction cost can pass the feasibility. Finance can be withdrawn. The owner can sell the site. The lapse date can pass. None of that is rare, and none of it is published as a national attrition percentage you should apply to a suburb. Treat the register as an upper bound of what someone once sought permission to build.

Labelled illustration. A suburb register over three years shows 640 apartments approved across five projects; two with a later building approval; one recorded as commenced; none recorded complete. National ABS approvals for the same months will show those dwellings when the building permits issued, then go quiet. Reading “640 apartments coming” over-counts. Reading “one job under way, two with building permission, two with planning permission only” matches the funnel. A quiet fenced site with an old approval sign is not a crane.

• Summing planning approvals and calling them supply.
• Applying a one-to-three-year rule to every job.
• Assuming an old approval has lapsed without checking that council’s clock and any extension.
• Reading a fall in monthly building approvals as a fall in homes available this month.

The nearby pipeline shows each project’s status as recorded in the source register and groups applications on one site so amendments are not counted several times. It does not convert approvals into a completion date. Where the register records commencement or completion, that is shown. Where it does not, the status is the planning status only.

Read the planning notice and the lapse or extension record at that council. Ask whether a building approval has been issued. Visit the site. Developer sales material is marketing. ABS tables will not name the lot.