Building costs set to jump again, and tradies brace for 2026 hit
Halloween is already behind us this year, but this is one of those stories that still sends a chill down the spine. Construction costs look set to climb again in 2026. This is not some distant headline that lives in a report. If material prices rise again, it will be felt on site, in timelines and budgets.
Busy site. Tight margins.
This time the warning is coming from WT, not the government. WT is a consultancy that closely tracks Australia’s construction sector, and based on what they are seeing, 2026 is shaping up for another sustained increase in building costs. The forecast sits at around a five percent rise nationwide. It does not sound huge on its own, but the problem is that costs have not really eased for years now.
What the report points to is something most people in the industry already know, and something we have covered before here at Intrade. The situation is being pushed by a lack of skilled labour, there is investment and demand, but not enough capacity to actually deliver, It is not a sudden shock, It is the continuation of the same pressure points that have been building for a long time.
How it really feels on site
When people talk about “building costs”, they usually picture developers or investors. On site, tradies experience it very differently. Tighter budgets mean harder conversations. Variations get picked apart. Timelines quietly shrink without much explanation.
In practical terms, this often turns into longer days and tighter calls. The focus shifts to delivering faster, and mistakes feel far more costly. For some of the tougher operators, that might not bite straight away. But as a project drags on, fatigue builds. Tradies are not machines. You cannot just keep winding the pressure up without consequences.
“When the budget tightens up top, the site feels it first.”
The real engine behind the rise: not enough people
This can sound like copy and paste at this point, but it is still the core issue behind the entire problem. There is simply not enough skilled labour. There is plenty of work, but not enough people available to do it. Projects stall, stretch out and bottleneck. No one has figured out how to build without people yet.
That creates an uncomfortable paradox. On one hand, demand keeps many trades busy and gives them options. On the other, sites slow down, teams get thinner and the workload keeps landing on the same shoulders. Some tradies are better placed than others, but overall the feeling across the industry is uncertainty rather than confidence.
2026 looks more expensive, not necessarily worse
This is not about ruining your Christmas dinner by stressing over forecasts, but it is a reminder to read the landscape clearly. Higher costs do not automatically mean less work. But they do raise the stakes, especially for younger tradies and smaller operators who have less room to push back on rates.
When pressure keeps building on site, it chips away at something else too: confidence. And that is part of why fewer people are choosing to step into the trades at all. An industry that runs permanently hot eventually starts burning its own pipeline.
Trending News
This is not a story about wealthy people whinging over expensive finishes. This is about ironclad contracts, untouchable builders and a client who says he was left with a rubbish penthouse and then threatened on top of it. The video has already gone viral, and what it shows is hard to ignore while the whole industry watches. This is exactly the kind of yarn that gets passed around on smoko, coffee in hand.