Building a house is becoming more expensive as the high cost of energy pushes up the price for some construction materials, the peak national building body says.
Housing Industry Association chief economist Tim Reardon said price increases in the cost of construction were "certainly continuing", even though supply chain delays had eased.
Mr Reardon said the price of some commodities, such as timber, had fallen in recent months, but the cost of energy-intensive resources such as cement, glass, and aluminium was increasing.
"That's as a consequence of the increase in energy prices globally flowing through to the domestic market," he said.
"It's also a consequence of a very large level of investment in Australia and globally in infrastructure projects, [like] roads and bridges [that] are all heavy users of cement."
Materials, skills shortage
In Queensland's Bundaberg region, builder Jesse Zielke said the supply chain was "improving".
"We've still got some products that we're struggling to get when we need them, particularly concrete," he said.
"Those products that do require a lot of energy also take up a lot of room on a truck, so the fuel required to get bricks and concrete to site is definitely still rising in price."
Mr Zielke said, aside from supplies, sourcing labour remained difficult.
"We've still got some issues with some finishing trades like tilers, painters, bricklayers," he said.
One of the directors of Stroud Homes Wide Bay, Aletha Walters, said the shortage of qualified workers was the "biggest issue" facing the industry.
"We have found that the Bundaberg area, in particular, has had a massive skills shortage, which in turn has a flow-on effect to the timelines and how long it takes us to build homes."
She said it had resulted in builds being managed "very closely".
"Instead of being able to have a tiler on each job at the same time, now one job has to wait for a tiler to finish on another job before they can get to their job," Ms Walters said.
"So it really is a matter of having an order of jobs and what their handover dates are, and coordinating those a lot more tightly than we used to."
'Increased dramatically'
Mr Zielke, who builds homes throughout Queensland's Wide Bay region, said national and global events were at the crux of a major shift in the building industry.
He said many people who had purchased land during the pandemic were deciding their next move.
"That land is only just being developed now and titled," he said.
"It's been so long that, obviously, the [construction] prices have increased dramatically since then.
"Interest rates have changed, the cost of building has gone up, the whole circumstance for those people has changed, so they're just deciding to either hold onto the land or sell it."
Mr Zielke said many landowners were opting to sell.
"A lot of people are being shocked at the price of what it costs to build a house these days," he said.
"Although they're inquiring, your strike rate into converting it into an actual home is less than pre-COVID."
