Total residential building approvals fell by 1.3% during the month, while the figure for the three months leading up to April reached -5.9%.
"Today's approval numbers are driven by a 3.5% fall in detached housing approvals and unfortunately constitute yet another soft update on the state of Australia's residential building industry," said HIA senior economist Andrew Harvey.
"April's detached housing approvals represent the weakest monthly result since March 2009 and provide more evidence that housebuilding levels are heading back towards the GFC-affected lows of financial year 2008/09."
The month’s good news story comes out of Queensland, where seasonally adjusted building approval numbers rose by 29.2% following a poor weather-affected start to the year.
South Australia saw the next biggest increase of 9.9%, while the biggest loser was New South Wales with a 12.9% fall.
