Waipa construction booming
08 April 2015At least one new house a day for every day of the week is now under construction in the Waipa district.
For the first three months of 2015, Waipa District Council issued building consents for 95 brand new houses - 20 in January, 37 in February and 38 in March.
That equates to more than 31 houses on average each month getting the green light; an increase of 4.4 per cent from this time last year.
Fifty-four of the building consents were for new homes in Cambridge with a further 22 new houses planned for Te Awamutu or Kihikihi. In Pirongia/Ngahinepouri, consents were issued for 13 new houses with the remaining six spread across the district.
The average value of the new homes is $340,000.
In 2009 over the same period only 51 consents were issued.
Council's planning and regulatory manager Wayne Allan said his team of building inspectors and planners was consistently busy.
We have 61 building consent applications just waiting on fees to be paid so they can be uplifted, we've asked for more information for a further 55 and there's another 58 new applications in line to be processed. So that's another 174 applications in the system and more coming in the door every day.
There are currently three large residential growth areas underway in Cambridge as well as a proposed new retirement village for Cambridge Road, he said.
The council was also looking to update its industrial structure planning for the Hautapu area and wants to work with landowners to develop new industrial sites on the northern side of the Cambridge section of the Waikato Expressway.
At a recent breakfast hosted by the council, Infometrics senior economist Benje Patterson said Waipa's economic growth was well above the national average and indicators for the district were good. Waipa's GDP had grown by 2.6 per cent a year over the past decade, compared to 1.4 per cent for the wider Waikato region and 1.8 per cent nationally, he said.
Patterson said agriculture, housing and construction, recreation and tourism were among Waipa's key economic drivers.
Media enquiries, contact Jeanette Tyrrell (on behalf of council) 027 507 7599