Builders, plumbers, politicians and councillors like the idea of self-consenting, but insurers and bankers will want a lot of reassurance they don't get lumped with another leaky buildings crisis
I can see modular prefabricated buildings being constructed offshore and imported now that building products legislation has been loosened and introducing self certification closes the loop. Nick Mowbray from Zuru has been working on this project for a number of years. https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/start-ups-entrepreneurs/zuru-nick-mowbray/
Given that this (central) government is trying to bankrupt councils (think privatisation of water) I feel the buck on guaranteeing new builds will be passed on to them…
The proposed 60m2 "granny flat" regime is proposed to be BC and RC free - so no oversight of that at all! No bucks stopping anywhere except with the property owner.
Just how much time is expected to be saved by the self certification changes and how much lower cost will houses become??. Surely someone has done a Business Case on it???
The issue remains that KO building has been stopped - stopped! How many homes are being built currently for low income people to rent or buy??
Can someone explain to me why banks are taking a more proactive interest in farm emissions rather than our government? Have I missed something? I don’t mind that they are however isn’t the government missing in action on emissions?
I suspect the banks have put a financial/risk lens over this. Basically, they are concerned about incurring losses. The govt only has to worry about getting votes once every three years.
If we don't comply with regulations outside NZ (major trading/exporting etc) then we (the famers) won't be able to export their produce. That in turn means that they will likely see revenue impacted negatively. This means that their (the farmers') ability to service their outstanding debt may be negatively impacted. This in turn will likely reflect on the banks' balance sheets. Not only will this likely see an increase in arrears, it will also likely increase the provisions for doubtful debt and expected losses.
Of course, depending on the community, it's not only the actual farm owners who will likely be impacted. If those farmers no longer have sustainable revenues, they may not be able to keep employing people. That will impact those people and communities.
It's really bloody awful.
The cynic in me has always said that people will only start paying attention when this bites them in their pocket.
Thanks Carolyn, lovely info. I get why banks look at financial risk. It is the government’s responsibility to be accountable for trade deals and the clauses within on behalf of all NZer’s- where the fuck are they???
The Washington Post palaver seems strange from afar... as a news source you'd think you'd want to accurately present the news, and maybe have individual opinion pieces which could endorse/not endorse a candidate, but to have a news institution endorse a political candidate feels problematic? Imagine if Stuff came out in direct support of Labour or National?
It's not uncommon overseas. In the UK in 1992 The Sun claimed credit for a Conservative election victory with the headline "It's the Sun wot won it." The WaPo has consistently vilified Trump since its first cautious warnings in 2016. No-one could be in any doubt where the paper stands on him as a candidate. Some have voiced concerns that Bezos has lucrative government contracts up for renewal and is hedging his bets on the orange one winning. The Guardian has labelled it "anticipatory obedience."
Re: imagine? Can you picture Mike Hosking offering support to Labour or the Greens?
I have a feeling Bezos is keeping WaPo out of it due to wider issues of Mr. Musk's involvement with Putin, and support for Trump. I can see a world post election ( if Harris wins) where Space X contracts and Starlink license to operate get cancelled and Mr Bezos will be seen as a "neutral" operator able to take them over. Problem with Billionaires with other business interests also owning media. WaPo is a distant 3rd in Bezos list of priorities by the sound of it.
On 24 October 2024 Building Consent Approvals, a Christchurch company, was given accreditation to be registered to grant building consents and issue code compliance certificates. Privatisation of building consent and code compliance is now here (again) in New Zealand.
Act wants to privatise everything in New Zealand and allow foreigners/foreign businesses to own everything (including residential property) in New Zealand. the Douglas/Prebble/Seymour/etc/etc/etc monster is relentless.
Surely self consenting is not that big of a deal (I would argue it is actually a great idea). This already happens around the world. In fact when I was talking to Irish family about this issue they were gobsmacked that the council would ever have anything to do with building inspections.
Plus we already have a precedent for this in NZ. Surveyors, engineers, etc. all sign off their own work, but they need to hold private liability insurance for the rest of their lives (even after individuals retire or businesses shut down).
And that's the trick, I think. The insurance backstops for a homeowner need to be a lot more robust than they are now. There were build Guarantees before the leaky homes' crisis...And if councils are no longer consenting to buildings meeting code, then they need to be off the hook for shelling out when a building does fail.
Thanks Bernard...lots of great reportage as usual (I especially liked the cartoon - bang-on!). On the positive side of the ledger though - health care becoming a major [electoral] concern, NZers coming round to the idea of a CGT on rental properties (we're almost there...) and the banks and insurance industries actually doing the necessary work to bring farmers and other polluters to heal. Incidentally - when is the next instalment of your solutions-focussed Kaka Project due?
There is, sort of, a degree of self-certification by builders with some of the buildings exempt from needing a building consent (Schedule 1 of the Building Act) where the work is carried out by or under the supervision of a Licensed Building Practitioner.
However there are good reasons for having several inspections during the construction of a house because critical building elements get covered up as construction progresses and cannot be readily inspected later - either at the end of construction or by purchasers of buildings. Even for these simple detached houses. Then there is the inspection failure rate reported in Checkpoint of 30-35% of inspections. It adds up to self-certifying the whole build or reducing inspections to a start and finish one, as the Minister suggested, as being something from la-la land.
Nor is the time and cost of inspections an impediment to construction such that removing or reducing it will mean lots more house are built - decisions on when and what to build are driven by the best (most profitable) time and rate to build - ie build now or build later, not the reduction in the cost of what is small % of the total development cost.
The Minister is just pushing ideology based on deluded thinking.
I realised that anecdotes don’t make for rational argument, but here is my personal experience of building inspection. Between 1985 and 2014 I built 3 family homes for ourselves (we are living in the last one). I was not a builder, and like many other New Zealanders, we did it in our spare time and holidays. I cannot say we made a lot of capital gain, but it was materially advantageous. I really appreciated visits from the building inspectors. It gave surety that things had been done correctly. In the early years they gave great advice. I cannot see how you can have confidence in your most valuable possession without an independent authority checking it was built correctly. That must apply whoever is the builder.
I can see modular prefabricated buildings being constructed offshore and imported now that building products legislation has been loosened and introducing self certification closes the loop. Nick Mowbray from Zuru has been working on this project for a number of years. https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/start-ups-entrepreneurs/zuru-nick-mowbray/
Given that this (central) government is trying to bankrupt councils (think privatisation of water) I feel the buck on guaranteeing new builds will be passed on to them…
The proposed 60m2 "granny flat" regime is proposed to be BC and RC free - so no oversight of that at all! No bucks stopping anywhere except with the property owner.
Just how much time is expected to be saved by the self certification changes and how much lower cost will houses become??. Surely someone has done a Business Case on it???
The issue remains that KO building has been stopped - stopped! How many homes are being built currently for low income people to rent or buy??
Can someone explain to me why banks are taking a more proactive interest in farm emissions rather than our government? Have I missed something? I don’t mind that they are however isn’t the government missing in action on emissions?
I suspect the banks have put a financial/risk lens over this. Basically, they are concerned about incurring losses. The govt only has to worry about getting votes once every three years.
If we don't comply with regulations outside NZ (major trading/exporting etc) then we (the famers) won't be able to export their produce. That in turn means that they will likely see revenue impacted negatively. This means that their (the farmers') ability to service their outstanding debt may be negatively impacted. This in turn will likely reflect on the banks' balance sheets. Not only will this likely see an increase in arrears, it will also likely increase the provisions for doubtful debt and expected losses.
Of course, depending on the community, it's not only the actual farm owners who will likely be impacted. If those farmers no longer have sustainable revenues, they may not be able to keep employing people. That will impact those people and communities.
It's really bloody awful.
The cynic in me has always said that people will only start paying attention when this bites them in their pocket.
Thanks Carolyn, lovely info. I get why banks look at financial risk. It is the government’s responsibility to be accountable for trade deals and the clauses within on behalf of all NZer’s- where the fuck are they???
The Washington Post palaver seems strange from afar... as a news source you'd think you'd want to accurately present the news, and maybe have individual opinion pieces which could endorse/not endorse a candidate, but to have a news institution endorse a political candidate feels problematic? Imagine if Stuff came out in direct support of Labour or National?
👍
It's not uncommon overseas. In the UK in 1992 The Sun claimed credit for a Conservative election victory with the headline "It's the Sun wot won it." The WaPo has consistently vilified Trump since its first cautious warnings in 2016. No-one could be in any doubt where the paper stands on him as a candidate. Some have voiced concerns that Bezos has lucrative government contracts up for renewal and is hedging his bets on the orange one winning. The Guardian has labelled it "anticipatory obedience."
Re: imagine? Can you picture Mike Hosking offering support to Labour or the Greens?
I have a feeling Bezos is keeping WaPo out of it due to wider issues of Mr. Musk's involvement with Putin, and support for Trump. I can see a world post election ( if Harris wins) where Space X contracts and Starlink license to operate get cancelled and Mr Bezos will be seen as a "neutral" operator able to take them over. Problem with Billionaires with other business interests also owning media. WaPo is a distant 3rd in Bezos list of priorities by the sound of it.
On 24 October 2024 Building Consent Approvals, a Christchurch company, was given accreditation to be registered to grant building consents and issue code compliance certificates. Privatisation of building consent and code compliance is now here (again) in New Zealand.
Act wants to privatise everything in New Zealand and allow foreigners/foreign businesses to own everything (including residential property) in New Zealand. the Douglas/Prebble/Seymour/etc/etc/etc monster is relentless.
Surely self consenting is not that big of a deal (I would argue it is actually a great idea). This already happens around the world. In fact when I was talking to Irish family about this issue they were gobsmacked that the council would ever have anything to do with building inspections.
Plus we already have a precedent for this in NZ. Surveyors, engineers, etc. all sign off their own work, but they need to hold private liability insurance for the rest of their lives (even after individuals retire or businesses shut down).
And that's the trick, I think. The insurance backstops for a homeowner need to be a lot more robust than they are now. There were build Guarantees before the leaky homes' crisis...And if councils are no longer consenting to buildings meeting code, then they need to be off the hook for shelling out when a building does fail.
Thanks Bernard...lots of great reportage as usual (I especially liked the cartoon - bang-on!). On the positive side of the ledger though - health care becoming a major [electoral] concern, NZers coming round to the idea of a CGT on rental properties (we're almost there...) and the banks and insurance industries actually doing the necessary work to bring farmers and other polluters to heal. Incidentally - when is the next instalment of your solutions-focussed Kaka Project due?
Is anyone discussing a wealth tax?
There is, sort of, a degree of self-certification by builders with some of the buildings exempt from needing a building consent (Schedule 1 of the Building Act) where the work is carried out by or under the supervision of a Licensed Building Practitioner.
However there are good reasons for having several inspections during the construction of a house because critical building elements get covered up as construction progresses and cannot be readily inspected later - either at the end of construction or by purchasers of buildings. Even for these simple detached houses. Then there is the inspection failure rate reported in Checkpoint of 30-35% of inspections. It adds up to self-certifying the whole build or reducing inspections to a start and finish one, as the Minister suggested, as being something from la-la land.
Nor is the time and cost of inspections an impediment to construction such that removing or reducing it will mean lots more house are built - decisions on when and what to build are driven by the best (most profitable) time and rate to build - ie build now or build later, not the reduction in the cost of what is small % of the total development cost.
The Minister is just pushing ideology based on deluded thinking.
I realised that anecdotes don’t make for rational argument, but here is my personal experience of building inspection. Between 1985 and 2014 I built 3 family homes for ourselves (we are living in the last one). I was not a builder, and like many other New Zealanders, we did it in our spare time and holidays. I cannot say we made a lot of capital gain, but it was materially advantageous. I really appreciated visits from the building inspectors. It gave surety that things had been done correctly. In the early years they gave great advice. I cannot see how you can have confidence in your most valuable possession without an independent authority checking it was built correctly. That must apply whoever is the builder.