SR348 New House Owners' Satisfaction Survey 2015 (2019)

This report presents the results of the fifth annual New House Owners’ Satisfaction Survey. The survey looks at how new house owners rate their builder and how satisfied they are with the builder’s performance.

The survey covers a sample of New Zealand’s housing consents. It excludes spec builds (a house built without a specific committed buyer) and houses built by family members.

Results show signs of improvement from last year’s survey. Average scores were up by 3% nationally. However, Canterbury is still performing worse than the rest of the country, highlighting the struggles that many in the region are still having after the 2010/11 earthquakes. About 60% of respondents from Canterbury were first-time house-building clients who were building because their home was damaged by the earthquakes. Builders need to keep this in mind when dealing with clients in the region.

Previous reports had highlighted the gap between the performance of the builder and client expectations. This year, we saw a small closing of that gap. There was a decrease in the number of respondents that would speak critically about their builder. Disputes over final cost and call-backs were also less frequent than in last year’s survey.