Commercial and Industrial Key Findings

• While the number of commercial and industrial building permits issued has held relatively steady over the past 5 years, there appears to be a steady decline in the value of estimated building costs since the 2014-15 period. This may not be a realistic decline due to the injection of $40M to the Mann Central Shopping Centre alone in the 2014-15 period, therefore skewing an underlying annual trend between $20M and $30M.
• 70.8% of all commercial and industrial building permits issued relate to new commercial works, with 18.4% attributed to commercial alterations and 10.8% attributed to industrial developments.
• The value of new commercial developments contributes 93.3% of the total value invested over the financial year periods 2013-2018, while commercial alterations only contributed 5.1%, and industrial development making up the remainder at 1.6%. The reason for such a significant contribution from the new commercial works sector is due to the rather substantial contribution from the Mann Centre Shopping Centre development (approximately $40M, and 23% of all new commercial activity over the 5 year period).
• The availability of vacant commercial and industrial land remained relatively steady over the 2013 to 2018 financial year periods, with only slight decreases in both commercial and industrial vacant land classes, and a negligible increase in development use vacant land.
• The number of commercial and industrial lots created is virtually negligible over the 2013-2018 financial year periods.
• The sale of vacant commercial and industrial land is generally low and consistent (usually less than 2 sales per year for commercial land, less than 8 sales for industrial land, and an average of 8 sales for development use land), although there were 17 sales of vacant industrial land in the 2014-15 period. 2014-2015 showing a significant peak in sales for both Development Use Land and Industrial Land by comparison with other years.