Family’s lifestyle block now an ‘expensive paddock’ after rule changes halt dream home plans

Thursday, 25 June 2026

William Lamers and Erika Koderich bought a lifestyle block in 2020 with plans to build their family’s forever home on the land.

Months later, but unbeknowest to them, council rule around building dwellings on productive land changed, throwing their project into uncertainty.

They poured thousands of dollars and countless hours into their dream, only to discover the rule change when they applied for a building consent last year. Now, they are at odds with what to do next.

They had it all planned out - buy a lifestyle block and build their family’s forever home. But after years of hard work and hundreds of thousands of dollars put towards the project, William Lamers and Erika Koderich’s dream may be over thanks to council rule changes they say they did not know about. The council acknowledges it is a difficult situation for the couple, but says the rule changes were publicly notified. Jake Kenny reports.

Six years after buying a lifestyle block with plans to build their forever home on it, a family’s plans have ground to a halt thanks to council rule changes they say they did not know about - costing them countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In July 2020, William Lamers and Erika Koderich bought a 4ha lifestyle block between Lincoln and Springston, about a 30 minute drive south of Christchurch, for $432,000. The couple and their two young children, Tate, 3, and Cleo, 6, were excited to begin building their new four-bedroom, single-storey home surrounded by farm animals. The family spent just about every weekend at the property building fences, bringing horses and chickens in, erecting sheds, and planting shrubs, trees and flowers.

They also installed a water well bore, pump station and septic tank connected to a dispersal field.

Midway through last year, the couple engaged a building company to build their home.

Before any contract was signed, they paid for working drawings, foundation engineering, a surveyor for site levels and the Selwyn District Council (SDC) fee for obtaining the required floor level height.

By the time they put pen to paper with the company, they estimated they’d poured another $170,000 into the project.

However, they were about to hit a major roadblock.

In October, in response to a building consent application, the council advised a resource consent was required to build the home, because the rules had changed around the use of highly productive land - a classification the couple’s property came under.

When Lamers and Koderich bought the property, productive land could have a dwelling built on it as long as the property was at least 4ha.

However, within months, the rules changed, increasing that to 20ha.

The couple say they had no knowledge of the rule change, or the fact their land was classified as productive prior to lodging the building consent application.

(The Selwyn District Council says the rule changes were publicly notified through its website, media and advertising, and that it is not feasible for it to engage with its thousands of landowners about potential changes. More on that later.)

As Lamers and Koderich scrambled for a solution, the couple say a planner quoted them a minimum of $60,000 to $70,000 to prepare the resource consent application, with no guarantee it would be approved.

They say the planner advised it was at best a 50/50 chance of success and would require a specialist lawyer, environmental planner, traffic reports and the council’s fees.

Lamers and Koderich say they simply cannot afford the extra costs.

In their words, they now own a “very expensive horse paddock”.

For the past six years, the family has been living in a rented bach at the nearby Selwyn Huts - a small riverside community of about 95 houses.

The children became more and more excited at the prospect of moving onto the lifestyle block as they grew older.

“They have both spent their childhoods at the property, helping to create this dream,” Koderich says.

In a few weeks, Lamers will fly to Australia to work six weeks on and two weeks off as a roofer, to save as much money as he can so the family can start over.

Koderich will juggle her fulltime job with the New Zealand Defence Force, childcare and holding down the fort at home, as well as looking after their “useless” paddock.

“It is our only way to move forward after being placed in this situation,” she says.

The words to describe the ordeal are hard for her to pinpoint.

“Immense pressure. Countless sleepless nights. Arguments trying to understand the endless clauses,” Koderich says.

“I have to explain [to our children] that we will never be able to live there even though they have had to spend endless time helping us plant and prepare for our dream.”

The couple say there were multiple opportunities for the council to advise them of the rules - including when their septic tank was issued a certificate of acceptance by SDC staff, and when they had their sheds approved and built.

They say it would have been obvious that they were planning to build a home on the property.

According to the couple, when they asked why they were not told about the rule changes or land classification, they were advised that it was publicly notified in The Selwyn Times newspaper and on the council’s website.

“Who checks the paper or the council’s website just in case there are changes to rules that we don’t even know exist?” Koderich says.

The other option floated with the couple was to ask their neighbours to effectively lend them 16ha worth of land for the purposes of the consent - something the couple say they asked about, but, “understandably”, their neighbours were not comfortable with it.

In response to questions from Stuff, Robert Love, the council’s executive director of building, planning and regulatory, said the changes were part of the district plan review - a full, 10-year, significant undertaking based on community feedback, data and modelling, that were publicly notified in 2020 including through submissions, hearings and public decisions.

District plans must give effect to national direction, he said.

“With a district plan review, changes apply across the entire district and to many thousands of properties,” he said. “It would not be feasible for [the] council to assess the implications of every rule change on every individual property, anticipate the future development intentions of landowners, and directly engage with them.”

He said the Resource Management Act set out a formal public notification, submission and hearing process that was followed, including through the media, council’s website, and advertising.

Love said the identification of highly productive land was directed by the Ministry of Environment’s national policy statement - a nationwide, interim framework.

It was not a classification made on a site by site basis by councils, he said.

The classification applied until regional councils (in this case Environment Canterbury) completed more detailed, region-specific mapping, Love said.

“This is a standardised, nationwide approach that relies on existing mapping datasets, rather than site‑specific inspections or how the land is currently being used.”

Asked if council would be willing to assist or explore other options with Lamers and Koderich, Love said the district plan set the regulatory framework that the council must apply consistently across all landowners.

“Council must apply the rules fairly across the district, and cannot make exceptions to the requirements outside of those processes.”

Love said a resource consent was the mechanism used to assess whether development outside of the rules was appropriate in any given location.

In response to the couple’s frustration and assertion that the council had opportunities to alert them to the rules when they applied for their septic tank certificate or when they had their sheds built, Love said: “We acknowledge this is a difficult situation for the landowners.

“It is important to note that approvals administered under the Building Act for infrastructure like sheds and wastewater systems relate to building consents and are permitted activities under the District Plan.

“Separately, the resource consent process considers whether establishing a dwelling on the site is appropriate under the district planning framework.”

The family had their site dug out late last year in preparation for the first swing of the hammer in November.

Now, as it stands, that will never happen.

“We are tired. Drained. And now we have to start again from scratch,” Koderich says.

“If we could wind back the clock we never would have bought in Selwyn.”