Sorting the housing numbers

Housing repairs and rebuilds will lead the earthquake recovery in Canterbury. With close to 50% of house insurance claims settled and a total of around $20 billion plus of housing stock damage before betterment, the activity in housing is about to get really serious.

It is important to understand the scale of what we're heading into. The most up to date figures we can ascertain from various sources look like this.

• There are around 145,000 houses with damage under cap (under $100,000). Of these just under 90,000 have damage between $10,000 and $100,000 and are being repaired under the Fletcher/EQC contract (or increasingly cashed up). That $3billion contract is just over half complete.
• There are approximately 25,000 house with over $100,000 worth of damage. Of these between 1000 and 2000 have been repaired or are under repair.
• There are somewhere around 2000 houses that have yet to be determined whether they are under or over cap.
• We have just under 8000 homes that have been completely destroyed or written off. 
• There are also 65,000 out of scope claims ( swimming pools, driveways etc).

However you look at it, two things are obvious. There is an enormous amount of work to be done in the housing sector and we have only just started.

It is important that we all understand these figures so that we know what we are heading into in the context of a total rebuild of around $40 billion, before betterment. And by the way, there is significant betterment occurring in most or the repairs and rebuilds being undertaken, so that $40 billion figure is starting to look light!

petert@cecc.org.nz

www.cecc.org.nz