Epping leads Sydney crane count followed by Wolli Creek
Sydney has a record 350 cranes constructing mostly residential apartments around the city.
Melbourne sits a distant second with around 150 cranes on the skyline, according to the RLB Crane index, published bi-annually by Rider Levett Bucknall.
Some 109 suburbs in Sydney currently have residential cranes.
“Every single crane in the sky is more evidence of another home, another school, another hospital, another business in our capital,” NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said.
Epping leads the Sydney residential count with 16, followed by Wolli Creek with 13, Parramatta with 10 and Burwood's nine. Mascot, Homebush, LANE COVE, Lewisham, Zetland, Leichhardt, Surry Hills, Ashfield, Auburn, Flemington, Meadowbank, Mosman, Ryde and Waterloo make up the top 18 construction localities.
Apartment buyers are going to be spoilt for choice across NSW as the number of units under construction hits all time highs.
The number of new units under construction sits at 64,470 in NSW, up on the 17,100 long term average.
Until five years ago, the most apartments being built in NSW at any one time was 25,000.
There are also 17,845 new houses currently under construction in NSW, slightly higher then the 13,500 long-term average.
The volume of new housing stock under construction sits at "dizzying heights," the CoreLogic analyst Cameron Kusher suggested, noting the surge in stock is clearly being driven by units.
"This is probably to do with the fact that many property purchasers in NSW can simply no longer afford houses particularly in Sydney so units become their only housing purchase option, Kusher added.
This current construction surge is not confined to NSW as the Australian Bureau of Statistics calculated around 215,000 dwellings are under construction nationally, against the 10 year average of 153,000.
The national figure sees around 63,000 houses and 152,000 units under construction nationally against the long-run average of 48,000 houses and 39,000 units.
The building activity data coincides with data showing the large increase in population fuelling housing demand.
It has been calculated 1650 new people have been calling Sydney home every week since 2011.
Over the past two years the Reserve Bank has regularly highlighted the potential risks posed by the large pipeline of apartment construction, but interestingly only in Melbourne and Brisbane where new apartments have represented a larger proportionate addition to supply.
Last week the RBA's latest Financial Stability Review did however note reports of small declines in prices in "a few" Sydney apartment development projects.
Substantial additions to the stock of apartments in particular locations certainly raise the possibility of price falls or subdued growth as the new stock gets absorbed.
So off the plan buyers approaching settlement will need to realise that tighter financing conditions are sometimes seeing valuations below the purchase contract price.
They will need to look around for finance and come up with a bigger deposit, possibly as much as 30 percent.
There are going to be suburbs that fare better than others when it comes to holding their value.
It is important to note the surge in unit stock takes time to build and the delivery of more stock can be slowed considerably.