The States with the Fastest and Slowest Home Build Times in Australia

Building a new home in Australia involves two key waiting periods: approval to commencement (the time from receiving planning approval to breaking ground), and commencement to completion (the time from first sod to handover). Both phases vary by state, and both have been affected by the post-COVID construction slowdown.

Section 01

How Long Does It Take to Build a Home in Australia?

Building a new home involves two main stages: the wait from approval to commencement, and the build itself from commencement to completion. Both stages matter, but the real blowout has been in construction, not in getting projects started.

What you build matters almost as much as where you build it. Detached houses remain the quickest to complete, taking an average of 9.2 months nationally in FY2025. Townhouses are slower at 11.7 months. Apartments take the longest at 28.7 months, pushing the average build time close to two and a half years from commencement to handover. In NSW, apartment completion times reached 31.8 months in FY2025, the longest recorded in this dataset.

Once the approval phase is added in, the gap becomes even clearer. The total time from planning approval to completion is 11.5 months for houses and 14.8 months for townhouses. Apartments are in a different category altogether, taking almost 33 months from approval to completion, or close to three years.

Section 02

Approval-to-Commencement Times by State

Once a building approval is granted, the next question is how quickly construction actually begins. Nationally, new houses in Australia took an average of 2.3 months to move from approval to commencement in FY2025, or roughly seven to eight weeks. But that average masks a wide gap between states.

The ACT was the fastest at 1.7 months, followed closely by the Northern Territory and Victoria at 1.8 months. South Australia was the slowest at 3.6 months, more than double the ACT's pace. It has held that position for most of the past decade, suggesting a structural issue rather than a short-term delay.

For townhouses, New South Wales recorded the slowest start times in the country in FY2025, at 4.6 months. That is almost double its FY2021 low of 2.3 months. Even so, approval-to-commencement times have remained far more stable than construction times. The biggest post-COVID blowout in build times has happened after projects get underway, not before.

Section 03

Commencement-to-Completion Times by State

This is where the numbers are most striking. House build times blew out after FY2021 as supply chain delays, labour shortages, and the HomeBuilder-driven surge in demand pushed construction capacity to its limit.

Queensland and the NT have the fastest house completion times, both at 7.1 months in FY2025. The Sunshine State has held this position for most of the past decade, helped by less complex houses and a labour market that has generally been less strained than the southern states.

At the other end is Western Australia. WA has the longest home build times of any state, with commencement-to-completion times peaking at 15.6 months in FY2024, more than double the national average. Extended border closures worsened labour shortages just as demand was rising. That eased to 13.1 months in FY2025, but WA remains well above the national average and its pre-COVID level. The ACT, at 11.3 months, and South Australia, at 10.1 months, are also slower than average.

The national average for houses fell from a peak of 10.4 months in FY2024 to 9.2 months in FY2025. Conditions are easing, but build times across Australia are still about 40% longer than they were before COVID.

Section 04

Build Time Trends in Australia Since 2015

The past decade falls into two distinct phases. From FY2015 to FY2021, build times were relatively stable across all major dwelling types. Houses typically took between 6.4 and 6.7 months to complete, townhouses between 8.8 and 10.6 months, and apartments between 18 and 26.1 months. Apartments were always slower, but the overall pattern was steady.

That changed from FY2022. Build times lengthened as the HomeBuilder stimulus drove demand higher, supply chains for materials came under pressure, and builders struggled to keep up as projects stacked up across multiple states.

The latest FY2025 data suggests the worst of that blowout may be easing, at least for lower-density housing. National house build times have fallen from a peak of 10.4 months in FY2024 to 9.2 months in FY2025. Townhouse build times have also improved, dropping from 12.9 months to 11.7 months over the same period. But the recovery is uneven. Western Australia remains the clearest pressure point. Even after improving from its FY2024 peak of 15.6 months, detached house build times in WA were still 13.1 months in FY2025, nearly double their pre-COVID level.

Chart Snapshots