Building consents issued for new dwelling units in New Zealand

Building nature: refers to the nature of the construction, and includes new buildings, altered, and new-plus-altered buildings.
- Alterations and additions: includes building repairs, alterations, additions, extensions, strengthening, re-cladding, and relocation to another site.
- New buildings: are new constructions, and include conversions. For example, if a hotel is converted to apartments, the value of building work is classified to new dwellings.

All construction: Residential buildings + Non-residential buildings + non-building construction
- Residential buildings: includes new construction, alterations, and additions to dwellings and domestic outbuildings.
- Non-residential buildings: includes new construction, alterations, and additions to commercial, industrial, and other non-residential buildings such as schools, hospitals, libraries, and farm buildings. Note: hostels, rest homes, and serviced apartments are classified as non-residential buildings.
- Non-building construction: is work that requires a building consent, but is not a building. For example, retaining walls, roads, bridges, signs, and wharves. Many civil engineering works require a resource consent but not a building consent, so are excluded.

RESIDENTIAL
Dwellings: are self-contained permanent residences. Examples include houses, apartments, townhouses, granny flats, and licence-to-occupy retirement village units.
- Houses: are houses not attached to other houses.
- Apartments: are dwellings identified as apartments on building consents, excluding those in retirement villages.
- Townhouses, flats, units, and other dwellings: examples include granny flats, and minor dwellings such as studios.
Domestic outbuildings: examples include sleepouts (not fully self-contained), carports, garages, and garden sheds on residential sections.

NON-RESIDENTIAL
Education buildings: examples include pre-schools, schools, polytechnics, and university buildings.
Factories and industrial buildings: examples include sawmills, freezing works, workshops, and hangars.
Farm buildings: examples include milking sheds, hay barns, implement sheds, and fattening units.
Hospitals, nursing homes, and other health buildings: examples include retirement villages (excluding units), and medical laboratories.
Hostels, boarding houses, and prisons: examples include children's homes and workers’ quarters.
Hotels, motels, and other short-term accommodation: commercial accommodation
Office, administration, and public transport buildings: examples include police stations, postal centres, banks, and railway stations.
Retirement village units: are villas, townhouses, apartments, or other dwellings within a retirement village, including those owned through a license-to-occupy. Excludes care apartments.
Shops, restaurants, and bars: examples include cafés, retail outlets, and service stations.
Social, cultural, and religious buildings: examples include sports facilities, museums, libraries, cinemas, and funeral parlours.
Storage buildings: examples include warehouses, cool stores, wharf sheds, and parking buildings.

http://datainfoplus.stats.govt.nz/Item/nz.govt.stats/ee083b32-8c10-4ccf-b1ee-a4990b27273c#

These statistics only include construction work that requires a building consent. Some civil engineering works, such as roads, require resource consents but not building consents, so are excluded.

At URL provided, select 'Building consents issued: December 2025 – CSV' zipped file. Open 'Building consents by institutional sector (Monthly)' file.

Building consents issued contains statistics on consents for residential and non-residential buildings by region and building type. It includes the number, value, and floor area of new residential dwellings, and the value of consents for residential alterations and additions. It also includes the value of consents for non-residential buildings, and the floor area of new non-residential buildings.

Building consents data reflect an intention to build, and is seen as a indicator of confidence in the domestic economy. Building consents is also an early indicator of building activity.

Stats NZ obtains data for building consents from all accredited building consent authorities (ie territorial authorities) each month. They compile information from building consents issued each month if:
- they are valued at $5,000 or more
- they are not predominantly for demolition work.