Just 23.2% of Australians who were involved in or closely monitoring an active new home build over the past 12 months say it was completed on time, according to the inaugural iCIRT Construction Index: Capacity Report, commissioned by iCIRT and conducted by YouGov. Major renovations fared somewhat better, with 28.8% completed on schedule.
Equifax Australia general manager commercial Brad Walters (pictured) said the findings point to problems extending well beyond individual building sites.
"The impacts naturally extend beyond individual site delays. They can ripple through to housing affordability, forward productivity, and national supply targets," Walters said.
Planning and site preparation — council approvals, land excavation, and civil works — account for 21.5% of construction delays, nearly double the impact of structural build or fit-out stages.
Labour constraints compound the problem: 83.6% of Australians believe worker shortages actively delay new housing and apartment completions, with 31.3% viewing the impact as critical, and 35% citing a shortage of reliable, qualified contractors as a primary barrier to buying, building, or renovating.
Master Builders Australia has quantified the scale of that shortage, putting the national construction workforce shortfall at 141,000 workers. Just 7,040 skilled visa holders are currently working in core construction trades nationally.
The pressure is also financial. Small-to-medium construction businesses saw asset finance demand contract 6.5% year-on-year in the June 2026 quarter, driven by steep pullbacks in Victoria (-9%) and New South Wales (-6.7%), even as large construction businesses recorded 3% credit demand growth. New small trade entrants fell 19% year-on-year, while small trade business exits surged 58%.
Residential builders carry outsized risk: CreditorWatch data puts residential building's tax default rate at 1.58% and trade payment default rate at 1.94%, among the highest of any sector it tracks.
Meanwhile, 34.7% of Australians say they can absorb no more than a 1–5% cost increase before scaling back or halting a build altogether.
The combined pressure is reshaping demand: the share of Australians intending to build within five years nearly halved to 5.3%, down from 9.9% in 2025, while confidence in new-build quality for multi-unit dwellings fell to just 9.6%, from 15.2% a year earlier.
For brokers, the findings underscore the value of factoring builder financial stability and completion risk into borrowing capacity conversations with clients financing construction loans, particularly for first-home buyers and property investors weighing new builds against established stock.
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