SR261 Physical characteristics of new houses (2018)

The amount of official data available on the characteristics of new housing is very limited. Building consents data held by Statistics New Zealand provides information on building type, value and floor area aggregated into territorial authorities. This is valuable data, encompassing a complete record of all consents. However, there is no information available on materials used or housing characteristics beyond the floor area.

This is the first of a series of reports on the physical characteristics of new housing. The data was obtained from BRANZ surveys to builders of new detached houses. The purpose of the surveys is to obtain data on new housing that is not available from official sources. This includes the generic type of materials used by building component, and design information such as number of floors, wind zones, envelope risk matrix scores, stud arrangements, prefabrication and efficiency measures.

The data is useful for studies in the fields of sustainability, energy efficiency, durability and engineering. The aim is to provide information useful to researchers, government officials and manufacturers.

See the BRANZ Research Now for a short and accessible summary of this report