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Our strategic direction

The quality, affordability and supply of residential and commercial buildings affects all New Zealanders.

Our role in delivering an effective regulatory regime for the building and housing sector, and in providing policy advice, is important for the sector to perform well. Its level of activity and productivity will be an important contributor to New Zealand’s economic growth and prosperity.

Achieving our outcomes

All of our activities seek to contribute to the overall outcome for New Zealand:

A building and housing market that delivers good quality homes and buildings for New Zealanders that contribute to strong communities and a prosperous economy.

The four medium-term outcomes to achieve this are:

  1. A business-enabling regulatory environment for building and housing that is efficient and effective, ensures public safety and delivers good quality homes and buildings that perform well in the New Zealand environment.
  2. An enhanced housing and building market that provides an accessible range of houses and buildings that meet New Zealanders’ economic and social needs.
  3. A well performing, professional building and housing sector that has the capability and capacity to do a good job.
  4. Participants in the building and housing market are well informed, can transact with confidence and are supported to resolve their disputes.

Our strategies in the Statement of Intent set out how we are going to achieve these outcomes. Our operating intentions outline our contribution to them. This contribution includes:

  • simplifying regulation of building and construction
  • simplifying regulation of building and housing standards and systems
  • continuing to ensure public safety and good quality buildings that perform in the New Zealand environment
  • lifting consumer awareness and supporting well-informed consumers to participate with increased confidence in the housing and building market
  • providing information and services to support dispute resolution
  • providing policy advice on a range of options and approaches to increase housing supply and improve affordability
  • conducting research and evaluation, and providing technical advice on building designs, systems and trends
  • improving monitoring and advice to Ministers on the performance of Housing New Zealand Corporation and its delivery of social housing objectives.