Building permits data from New Zealand for November 2023 came in at -10.6% m/m
- prior +8.5%
While this is an ugly data point the thing about building consents is that the m/m can be very volatile. The “lumpiness” comes from the ebb and flow of multi-unti developments in the data.
For that reason analysts and traders tend to turn to the y/y result instead. That’s hardly any better!
-24% y/y
- prior +8.7%
The statistics folks in New Zealand are trying to gloss over the data:
- “The annual number of new homes consented has continued to decrease from its peak of 51,015 in the year ended May 2022,”
NZD/USD is little changed around 0.6225