Building costs jumped 20.0% during the Christchurch rebuild

10 August 2016

QV costbuilder data shows building costs jumped 20.0% during the Christchurch rebuild

The latest QV costbuilder data shows the average cost of building a new home in New Zealand’s four largest cities has risen 21.09% since the previous peak of 2007, and 1.66% in the year to May 2016.

QV costbuilder is an arm of Quotable Value (QV) and provides the latest construction cost data to the property and construction industries through an online subscription web platform tool, which can be accessed on any device.

Subscribers can access a comprehensive range of building costs associated with the construction of various buildings, including residential and commercial properties.

QV National Spokesperson Andrea Rush said, “The beauty of QV costbuilder is it not only allows those in the construction industry to accurately price all materials so they can budget for any building project.”

“It also allows QV to track the long term trends in the cost of building homes in New Zealand’s four largest cities, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.”

“QV costbuilder data shows that after peaking in 2007, the cost of building a new home dropped between 2008 and 2010, following the global financial crisis. It then jumped significantly between 2011 and 2012 when the Christchurch rebuild got underway.”

“That year the cost of building a standard 90 to 130 square metre sized home in Christchurch jumped 21.63%; in Auckland it rose 14.29%; in Wellington it increased 11.02% and in Dunedin it climbed 10.20%.”

“Since then residential building costs have continued to rise annually at a rate of between 1.5% and 5.5% per year, across all QV costbuilder categories and the cities measured,” she said.

“However, Christchurch and Auckland have seen the largest rate increase in the cost of building a new home, so it’s still more expensive to build in these two cities than in Wellington or Dunedin.”

“The average cost * of building a standard 140 m², 3 bedroom, one bathroom home in NZ for the four main centres is, Auckland $266,000, Wellington $252,000, Christchurch $272,125 and Dunedin $248,500.

Andrea Rush said, “It’s important to remember the average cost of building any home will always be dependent on the level of finishes, internal layout, and whether it has a single or double garage and these figures are averages.”

*Also these figures exclude the following:

• The cost of land

• Demolition of existing structures on the site

• Additional costs due to building code changes

• Increased structural requirements and external works such as landscaping, driveways and parking areas

• Utilities such as getting power, water, gas, drainage, phone/data mains from public connection to 3 metres from the building

• Balconies and covered ways

• Any loose furniture, fittings and equipment

• Professional, council, and legal fees

• GST

QV costbuilder tracks the cost of a huge range of residential dwellings including small medium and larged sized homes including one storey and two storey homes; multiple unit properties and two or three story townhouses; small apartments, multi-storey apartments and retirement village units and apartments. It also provides costs on industrial and commercial buildings.

The highest increases in costs have occurred in the large house category (between 200-600m²) with the price of building a house this size up 34.0% since the previous building boom in the lead up to the peak of 2007.

To subscribe to QV costbuilder go to https://qvcostbuilder.co.nz or emailqvcostbuilder@qv.co.nz

ends

© Scoop Media