The outlook for Australia’s residential construction industry in 2012 remains far from rosy, with a turnaround in fortunes unlikely in the first half of the year. 

This is according to latest HIA-rpdata.com Residential Land Report, which indicated that despite a modest increase in the number of residential lot sales in the September 2011 quarter, lot sales remain well down on mid-2010 levels. 

The marginal increase saw residential land sales climb 1.3% across Australia’s six mainland states, but sales remained 16.8% down on quarterly figures for September 2010. 

Capital cities led the recovery with an increase of 4.4% to 6,957 in the September 2011 quarter. In contrast, the volume of lot sales in regional Australia declined by 2.8% to 4,933.