Methodology
How we get our numbers
Every cost figure on this site is traceable to a public source with a date on it. If we cannot source a number, we do not publish one — which is why several lines in the budget tool start at zero.
The cost per square metre
When someone applies for a building consent they state the value of the building work. Divide that by the floor area consented and you get a cost per square metre. It is the most reliable public measure of what building actually costs in New Zealand, and it is the basis of every headline figure here.
- Source
- Stats NZ building consent data, analysed by interest.co.nz
- Period
- Q1 2026 — the same period for every region, so the comparison is like with like
- National figure
- $3,229 per m²
- Regions published
- 6 (Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Wellington, Canterbury, Otago)
- Last checked
- 2026-09-16
What that figure excludes
Land, site works, council development contributions, consent fees, service connections, landscaping and contingency. All of them are real costs of building a house and none of them are in the per-square-metre number. Quoting it as “the cost to build” without saying so is the most common way these figures get misused.
Why some numbers are blank
Development contributions and consent fees are set by each territorial authority and differ substantially between them. Site works depend on the section. A national average for either would be arithmetically true and practically useless, and presenting it as guidance would be worse than presenting nothing. So the budget tool asks you for those figures and tells you where to find them.
Regions we do not publish
We publish a cost page only for regions where we hold a sourced figure for the current period. The remaining regions have builder listings but no cost page, rather than a copy of another region’s page with the name swapped.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it and re-date it. Contact us.