Is this the cheapest way to build a house in NZ?

So the Living House may be part of the solution, but what’s the problem, really?

Last year it cost over $450,000 on average to build a home in New Zealand (and in 2025 the cost is even higher). According to RTA the best the government can do is around $600,000 plus land. The average property also takes around a year to build, or more if there are delays. Council consent is expensive and time consuming, and hiring a good architect will set you back $40,000+.

During this process the average build will generate 4-5 tonnes of waste, and 230 tonnes of C02 over a 90 year lifespan. Once it’s all done the result will most likely be fairly standard design-wise (see: white box), and marginally energy efficient if you’re building with cost in mind.

The limitations of traditional building are a big part of the reason why NZ is in the middle of a housing crisis, and so many Kiwis live in substandard housing. 

For $10,000 you’ll get drawings, specifications, a builder’s manual, and MultiProof approval, ready for submission as part of building consent (which speeds up the council consent review process from 20 to 10 days and saves your builder the work of putting together consent). You’ll also have access to pre-negotitated preferential rates via material suppliers.

In a nutshell, what you’re buying is everything you need to build the house in the image above - minus the licensed building practitioner (it’s your job to find one of those). 

Key features + inclusions

• 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom 85 sqm home. 

• Build cost of $335,000 + site specific costs.

• Construction in six weeks. Seriously. 

• 4 metre stud in the room. 

• Fisher & Paykel kitchen appliances (laundry additional). 

• Heat pump & hot water heat pump.

• Solar panels and inverter. 

• Outdoor aluminium louvre roof pergola.

• Close to zero waste construction. 

• Climate positive over a 50 year time frame. 

There are some pretty crazy numbers in the above bullet points, especially the construction time of six weeks. This is achieved using cross laminated timber panels (CLT) that fit together a bit like flat pack furniture, and go up much faster than traditional building techniques. RTA have also made sure that wiring and plumbing the house is much faster and simpler, to further reduce costs. Rich says the process is pretty straightforward: 

“36 panels all arrive on a truck and they’re screwed together in 4-5 days.”

“Traditional building is more expensive and takes much longer. It still requires one trade to put timber framing up, gib board, then painters, there are 3-4 extra trades just to get the same end point.”

Rich estimates that building this home traditionally would take three times as long, with countless extra trades required to complete:

“Cost wise you may be able to do something similar, maybe a bit more. People talk about per sqm rates, and this is pretty close to what you’d build 250sqm for - so this is very efficient.”

The biggest difference though is in environmental impact. We mentioned above that the average build creates 4-5 tonnes of waste and emits 230 tonnes of C02 over a 90 year period - well the living house is nearly zero waste and its climate positive over at least 50 years:

“The first builder to put one up ordered a skip and didn’t even fill it up to a quarter.”

“Climate positive is another way to say that if you look at the energy expended to build the house and operate it for 50 years, that’s less than the house is giving back,” this is partly due to timber mass, which sequesters carbon.