- NSW target, completed homes by June 20299,400
- Average a year over five years1,880
- Dwellings approved, 2024-251,225
- Dwellings approved, 2025-261,324
- Two years of approvals, share of target27%
The target is on the NSW planning department’s snapshot for Central Coast Council:
9,400 New completed homes by 2029
. The department’s own explainer sets the
window as the National Housing Accord’s, the five years between June 2024 to June
2029
, and is plain about what counts: Targets are for new homes completed.
Two of those five years are now over. The ABS publishes building approvals for every council area, and for the Central Coast it counts 1,225 new dwellings approved in 2024-25 and 1,324 in 2025-26, a rise of 99, or 8 per cent. Against the 1,880 a year the target averages, that is 65 per cent of the pace in the first year and 70 per cent in the second. Together the two years come to 2,549 approvals, 27 per cent of a five-year target, with 40 per cent of the time gone.
A building approval is the permit that lets construction begin. Not every approved home is built, and homes finished inside the target window include some approved before it started, so approvals cannot tell you how many homes will be completed by 2029. What they do show is the flow of new homes entering construction, and on that measure the Coast has not yet reached the rate it is meant to be finishing them.
More houses, fewer units
The rise came from detached houses. The ABS counts 861 new houses approved in 2025-26, up from 729, and 456 other new homes (townhouses, units and apartments), down from 486. Houses were 65 per cent of last year’s approvals.
Where they were approved
The ABS splits the Coast into two halves. In its Wyong area, the northern half, approvals rose from 710 to 873. In its Gosford area they fell from 515 to 451. So about two-thirds of last year’s approvals were in the north, the half council’s population forecast already expects to take more than half of the Coast’s growth.
Where the Coast’s 2025-26 approvals were
New dwellings approved by ABS area (SA2), 2025-26, top eight, with 2024-25 in brackets
Area names are the ABS’s Statistical Area Level 2 labels. Source: ABS Building Approvals, Australia, NSW SA2 data cubes for 2025-26 (August 2026 release) and 2024-25 (June 2026 release).
Five areas took 721 of the 1,324 approvals, more than half. The largest single move was Lake Munmorah - Mannering Park, from 7 approvals to 159, of which 154 were houses. Warnervale - Wadalba stayed near the top, with a different mix: 110 houses and 120 other dwellings, against 192 houses and 49 others the year before.
The fall in the south is mostly one area. Gosford - Springfield, the ABS area that holds the Gosford city centre, went from 159 approvals to 50, and its townhouses, units and apartments from 143 to 37. Approvals for apartments come in blocks, so one year can swing on one or two buildings; a single year is not a trend. It does mean the city centre, the subject of council’s Gosford Coming Alive 2040 renewal framework, and part of a district council’s population forecast expects to double by 2046, added fewer homes to the pipeline last year than Lake Munmorah did.
Our view
Labelled as opinion, on the figures above. A target counted in completions and a pipeline
approving homes at two-thirds of the needed rate do not have to mean the Coast misses, because
completions trail approvals and the earlier pipeline is not in these numbers. But two years in,
the approval count is the most recent council-level public evidence we could read, and it
points below the line, with the biggest single jump, 154 houses at Lake Munmorah - Mannering
Park, on the northern edge. The department says the targets prioritise more diverse and
well-located homes in areas with existing infrastructure capacity
; last year’s
approvals on the Coast moved the other way on diversity, with houses up and other dwellings
down.
The department says it will publicly monitor progress against each target on its website. Its housing supply dashboard carries completions, but in the data we could read they stop at December 2024, so two years of completions for this council cannot yet be set against 9,400. Until they can, the ABS approvals count is the figure to watch, and the September 2026 figures are due from the ABS in early November.
Methodology
Approvals are from the ABS Building Approvals NSW data cubes for local government areas and Statistical Area Level 2 (Sources 3 and 4), downloaded and read on 17 October 2026. The Central Coast (NSW) council area and the ABS’s Central Coast region (SA4) give identical totals in both years. “Dwellings approved” is the ABS total dwellings series, which includes a few homes created in non-residential buildings and so is slightly more than houses plus other residential (1,324 against 1,317 in 2025-26). The 2025-26 total was the same in the June and August 2026 releases. Shares, the 1,880 yearly average and the 27 per cent are our arithmetic. We looked at the planning department’s housing supply dashboard but have not used it: it renders in the browser, and the data behind it that we could read carried Central Coast completions only to December 2024, though the page lists a June 2026 update. We have not asked the department about that.