At Infrastructure New Zealand’s Building Nations conference in early August, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop reportedly denied that the government had pulled back from infrastructure and building, deepening the construction downturn.

Mortgage rates, income growth, and house sales activity: the three underlying influences on residential alterations and additions (A&A) activity – more commonly known as renovations.

After hovering at close to zero throughout the first half of last year, expectations for residential construction activity from ANZ’s Business Outlook strengthened from July 2024 – as did many other indicators in the survey of business sentiment.

Net migration is one of the big uncertainties currently when trying to forecast future residential construction activity levels.

Many of us have come to accept that doing the right thing for the environment comes with a higher cost. However, our recent analysis for the New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) found that households can be substantially better off with the benefits of a greener home.

A new report from leading economics consultancy Infometrics shows building better homes could save New Zealanders tens of thousands in energy bills and mortgage costs. The report, commissioned by the New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) and released today (Wednesday 7 May) at their annual Housing Summit, reveals homes built to a 6 Homestar standard can save New Zealand homeowners over $62,000 in electricity and mortgage interest over 30 years

MBIE has released new data looking at the performance of local authorities in processing building consents and code compliance certificates (CCCs).

As part of our broader modelling of industry and regional economic activity, we have recently updated our estimates of construction industry employment, along with forecasts out to 2030. And after 13 years of an expanding workforce, the near-term prospects for construction are challenging.

In late 2023, we established a split of our non-residential building forecasts into consents for new buildings and consents for alterations and additions (A&A). At the time, we noted the long-term trend in non-residential construction towards new building, and predicted that this trend would continue...

Aggregates are important. But how important is clouded by a lack of quality data being collected. Based on current production figures and survey response rates, the actual amount of aggregates produced over the last 12 years might be 49% higher than reported.