Costs slowing

The average cost of building a home in New Zealand’s main centres increased by 11.3 percent last year, but the good news is that the rising cost of construction appears to be slowing down.

Industry watchdog QV CostBuilder’s December price update analysed more than 51,500 rates to reach the latest increase in the cost to build a standard three-bedroom home.

This compares with a 20.9 percent annual increase in its May 2022 update.
Spokesperson and quantity surveyor, Martin Bisset says it appears that construction costs may finally be levelling off now, although at double-digit growth over the past year, there’s a long way to go to pre-pandemic prices.

The biggest elemental price increases since the May update related to framing, which went up 9.5 percent due to the increasing cost of precast concrete, reinforcing and structural steel. Costs related to exterior walls and exterior finish went up 7.7 percent, and the cost of upper floors and stairs and balustrades went up 7.4 and 6 percent respectively.

QV CostBuilder is a subscription-based building cost platform, powered by state-owned enterprise Quotable Value, with a database of more than 60,000 rates across six regions of New Zealand, including Christchurch. It covers everything from the building costs per square metre for banks, schools, and office buildings, to the approximate cost per sheet of GIB and more than 8000 other items, plus labour rates, labour constants, and more.