Granny flats get easier - but you still can’t build anything anywhere
Friday, 16 January 2026
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It’s now significantly easier to build a granny flat - but ministers are warning the change is not a free-for-all, and some builders are questioning how much time and money it will really save.
The scrapping of the requirement for resource consent for granny flats was marked by a visit on Friday by the Housing, Building and Associate Finance Ministers - Chris Bishop, Chris Penk and Shane Jones - to a minor dwelling in rural Riverhead, north-west of Auckland.
The occupiers insisted their home not be referred to as a “granny flat”.
“We’re not grannies,” they joked with ministers.
If their 65-square-metre, two-bedroom rental - complete with a single garage, kitchen and lounge - were built today, it would not need resource consent.
“For too long it has been overly difficult and expensive to provide the housing solutions New Zealanders need. Red tape has increased the workload for local councils and blocked simple, affordable dwellings that meet families’ housing needs,” the Housing Minister said.
But Bishop warned it would not be a “complete free-for-all” and that strict conditions would still apply.
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Minor dwellings cannot be larger than 70 square metres, must have a simple design, comply with the building code, be built by authorised tradespeople, be at least two metres from property boundaries and not be attached to existing buildings, among other requirements.
They must also be notified to councils and comply with the new natural hazards national policy statement, which also came into effect on Thursday and directs councils to take a risk-based and proportionate approach to natural hazards, including flood risk.
“You can’t just go and build something out the back,” Bishop said.
While no building consent will be required, applicants will be required to apply for and receive a project information memorandum (PIM) before building work can take place. It’s estimated this will cost on average $850 and take 10 working days to process.
Auckland minor-dwelling builder Robbie Macalister, of Macalister Construction, welcomed the changes - particularly after the sharp downturn the building sector has recently suffered.
In the past two days, he had received five inquiries, most from people wanting to add a minor dwelling to rent out.
But Macalister said some people planning builds would still be caught out by the restrictions.
“The regulations are pretty, pretty strict. For example, your floor level can’t be more than a metre above ground level, so on a sloped section that makes it hard,” he said.
The Government says the new regime could result in as many as 13,000 additional granny flats over the next decade - though Penk has admitted this number is “bullish”.
The Government also says the changes will “save New Zealanders up to $5650 in direct costs when building a granny flat and speed up the process by up to 14 weeks”.
It’s not clear where the exact $5650 figure comes from. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said it had “several different components”.
Among those was that the Ministry for the Environment estimated the consent savings to be $1,500 per dwelling while MBIE estimated the savings would be an average of $4431 per dwelling for a 70 square metre dwelling.
Matthew McDermott, MBIE’s manager of building performance and resilience policy, said:
“MBIE considers that the $2000-5000 figure is appropriate to use for this estimated saving as building consent fees vary across the country and by project size (for example, not every granny flat built under the exemption would be 70 square metres).”
The 14 week time saving was calculated using the maximum time it takes to apply for a consent, a code compliance certificate and inspection wait times.
Macalister expected to be able to pass on the roughly $5000 in savings to customers. But he believed the time savings would be closer to two months.
Rick Boven, the managing director of Ecopod Homes, said it would take time to understand the real-world impact on costs and timeframes for his business. While the dwellings might not need consents, there was still planning work which needed to be done.
His company’s minor dwellings are factory-built, so the process was already streamlined, and he said it would take a few builds to see whether the changes delivered further efficiencies.
Boven welcomed the changes and said that after a quiet 2025, he had already seen an increase in inquiries this year, which he suspected reflected people waiting for the rules to change.
Alongside the changes for minor dwellings and the new natural hazards direction, a total of 10 updated or new National Policy Statements came into effect on Thursday, covering renewable electricity generation and electricity networks, highly productive land, indigenous biodiversity, freshwater management, freshwater regulation and coastal policy.
A further five National Environmental Standards and other national direction instruments are expected to be considered by Cabinet in the coming months.
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