Building product rule overhaul aims to cut house building costs

Thursday, 4 April 2024

The Government wants to cut the cost of building houses by overhauling the certification of building materials.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk were at home builder Easy Build’s Upper Hutt facility on Thursday morning to announce intended changes to the Building Act to cut “red tape” in a bid to lower escalating prices for building products.

“We have a major challenge. Our building costs have gone up 41% in just the last five years across New Zealand. To build a house here in New Zealand is now 50% more expensive than it is in Australia,” Luxon said.

“We want to make it easier and cheaper to build.

“We are beyond the conversation of talking. We need to do things in this country … We are opening up comparable or better quality overseas products so that we can bring competition into the marketplace.”

The Government intends to change the Building Act so that building product standards from other trusted countries are recognised, removing a requirement that builders verify the standards, which is consuming and costly.

Building consent authorities ‒ including local councils ‒ will be required to accept building products that comply with these overseas standards.

Reputable certification schemes overseas, such as WaterMark in Australia, will also be approved, in the case of WaterMark allowing 200,000 products into New Zealand for use.

'If we look across the Tasman, in Australia if I've got equivalent, equal, or higher standards of building products, that can be measured against, then that's something that we're keen to lean into and use,“ Penk said.

He said the Government would pass law to allow for this, and would consult the sector to determine how equivalent or higher building product standards overseas will be determined.

“There might be differences and regions of the world where it might be that [there's a difference] from meterological or seismic conditions in New Zealand. To the extent that those are different, and we can't justify using the same thing, then we take a nuanced approach there.

“But there's also a safety level with the New Zealand whereby we've got the building consent authorities still have to approve the building project overall. So for example, not only that the product itself is robust and high quality, but also that's going to be used in a way that's appropriate.“

The Government is planning a broader overhaul of how houses are built.

Penk previously told The Post the Government planned to require building consenting authorities to provide data about how long consenting and code of compliance certificates were taking, as a first step in a potential overhaul of the system.