Sydney is the construction capital of Australia, where the number of cranes building high-rise residential towers doubled in the last six months.
The crowd of cranes is the most visible indicator yet of a housing boom that is transforming city skylines, Sydney’s most of all.
Some 76 new cranes have come onto Sydney residential sites in the last six months. With 15 taken down, the number of cranes working its residential projects totals 123.
Matthew Harris … Cranes across the skyline. Nic Walker
That is almost exactly double the figure of six months ago. The results are tallied by a crane index devised by quantity surveyors Rider Levett Bucknall as a handy gauge for the amount of residential and commercial construction under way.
In all, there are now 426 cranes at work on commercial and residential projects in Australia’s capitals, a 31 per cent gain since September last year.
“Based on our research, 73 per cent of all cranes erected across the country are on highÂ-rise residential projects, while only 13 per cent of the total number are erected on commercial projects,” said research director Stephen Ballesty.
This week Deutsche forecast record levels of housing construction to come over the next two years, with around half of all starts accounted for by apartments.
The boom is gaining pace in Sydney, with new projects such as the Belmont Wharf Apartments and the Homebush Grand Central Apartments. Residential projects account for three-quarters of the cranes now at work there. Six months ago it was closer to half.
Lend Lease has 11 cranes on its Barangaroo South project. Not far away, at Darling Harbour, it has another seven cranes for the new convention centre.
Construction on the Darling Square apartments begins soon. Combined with Barangaroo, the two projects will deliver almost 700 apartments in the next two years.
