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for first-home buyers. It is an urban development authority-led large-scale project like Sydney’s waterfront and Kings Cross in London and will be focused on components of the housing and urban system that are currently undersupplied.
MBIE will facilitate and deliver new housing at price points in the lower quartile, where nationally only 5% of new houses are currently delivered – compared to around 30% in the late 1980s. We will focus on delivering smaller, more-e cient dwellings, given the average size of new dwellings has increased by more than 50% since 1989, despite declining average household size.
The emphasis will be on delivering the much-needed medium and higher-density housing, and we will be focused on development locations that align with existing and planned transport investment. Through all this, we will be focused on partnering with iwi, the private sector, community housing providers and local authorities to leverage additional capital, assets and expertise so that the work programme facilitates the delivery of many more houses than the targeted 100,000 a ordable homes.
Why there’s a shortage of smaller housing
There are good reasons why smaller, denser, more a ordable houses are currently undersupplied:
● Highlandvaluesandincreasingconstructioncostsmakedelivering
a ordable housing challenging in high-growth areas.
● Developing medium and high-density housing generally involves higher levels of risk than stand-alone dwellings, both from a
regulatory and nancial perspective.
● Ourconstructionsectorandourbuildingregulatorysystemarenot
yet well suited to enabling and delivering higher-density typologies e ciently and at scale.
Compliance challenges
Tackling this will require the government to take a more exible, bolder approach to development risk than it has done in the recent past.
In particular, the Acceptable Solutions need to better re ect the increasingly important role that MDH will play in New Zealand’s urban future. The Building Code is performance-based and sets the standards that all completed building work must achieve.
However, at this time, not all methods and solutions are speci cally applicable to MDH. Resolving this will require meeting compliance challenges, including around vertical and horizontal separation, and the perceived complexity of complying with Building Code clauses for structure, durability, re, weathertightness, acoustic design and thermal design.
This will be a challenge we need to meet if we are to deliver the government’s ambitious housing and urban development agenda. MBIE looks forward to working with the sector in that pursuit.
Medium-density housing
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FEATURE SECTION