Development Strategy progress

​The 2012 Auckland Plan Development Strategy anticipates where growth will occur in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland in the long term (30 years). A quality compact urban form, where development is focused in existing urban areas, is a key aim of the Development Strategy.

This is the sixth and final monitoring update on the 2012 Auckland Plan Development Strategy. This year’s update reports on the current reporting year (1 July 2017 - 30 June 2018) and the six years since the 2012 Auckland Plan was adopted. In 2019, this update will report on the recently adopted Auckland Plan 2050 Development Strategy.

Residential dwelling supply

The 2012 Auckland Plan anticipates that Auckland’s growing population will require 100,000 new dwellings to be built in the first decade (2012-2021), an average of 10,000 each year. In 2017/2018, consents were issued for 12,369 new dwellings across Auckland (Table 1). Overall the number of dwellings consented each year has been increasing. The cumulative total for 2012-2018 is 52,848.

Table 1: New dwellings consented in Auckland (region-wide) by reporting year (2012-2018)

Source: Auckland Council and Statistics New Zealand

Residential form

The housing preferences of Aucklanders are diverse. A broad range of housing types is required, in a variety of locations. Location and typology are also important characteristics of a quality compact urban form.

The 2012 Auckland Plan aims to have up to 70 per cent of dwelling growth inside the 2010 Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL) and allows for up to 40 per cent outside it over the 30-year period of the plan. In 2017/2018, 82 per cent of new residential dwellings consented were located inside the MUL, with 18 per cent outside it.

​The 2012 Auckland Plan anticipates that up to 61 per cent of all new dwellings built may need to be attached. Across the region, the proportion of attached housing being consented has increased steadily over the last five years. In 2017/2018, 46 per cent of consented dwellings were attached dwellings. [Note 1] 

​Location of residential development by Local board/Ward (2017/2018)

The fastest growing Local board areas (by number of dwellings consented) in 2017/18 were Upper Harbour, Waitematā and Hibiscus and Bays. This is similar to previous monitoring years. Consenting activity increased in nearly all Local board areas. The outermost Local board areas of Waitākere Ranges, Waiheke and Great Barrier had the lowest number of new dwellings consented, which was consistent with previous monitoring years. Table 2 provides a breakdown of new residential development by Ward.

Table 2: New residential dwellings consented by Ward

Source: Auckland Council and Statistics New Zealand

Typologies (2017/2018)

The locations of consents for new dwellings in 2017/2018 are mapped for the Auckland urban area by attached and detached dwelling type (Residential building consents issued 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018). In the first two years of monitoring, consents for attached dwellings were located mainly in the city centre. In the last four years attached housing developments have become far more widespread across the urban area.

A ring pattern of attached housing developments is emerging in the outer isthmus; stretching from Glen Innes in the east through Panmure, Ellerslie, Royal Oak, Mount Albert and into Avondale and New Lynn in the inner west. This largely reflects the zoning pattern in the operative Unitary Plan, which is beginning to translate into development activity on the ground. Several other larger attached housing developments are located in Browns Bay, Takapuna, Manukau and Manurewa, and the greenfield development areas of Hobsonville Point and Long Bay.

Retirement village units made up 6.6 per cent of consented dwellings in 2017/18 with 817 consented dwellings (both attached and detached). This activity category has been shown separately.

Code of Compliance Certificates issued (2017/2018)

At the completion of any consented building work a Code of Compliance Certificate (CCC) is usually issued to certify that the work undertaken complies with the consent. It is not a strict requirement to obtain a CCC, and some building works are completed without a CCC ever having been issued. However, insurers, mortgage lenders and other parties are becoming stricter on those undertaking building work to ensure they obtain a CCC, and so it is becoming a more reliable indicator of actual completions.

Table 3 shows the number of consented dwellings issued with a code of compliance certificate in the year 2017/2018. Of these, 75 per cent (7,053 dwellings) had a CCC issued within two years of building consent being issued, 23 per cent were issued within 3-4 years and the remaining 2 per cent were for works consented more than four years previously.

Table 3: Dwellings with Code of Compliance Certificates issued (completions), 2017/2018

Rural areas

The number of new dwellings consented outside the Rural Urban Boundary (RUB) declined in the year 2017/ 2018 to 872 dwellings, or 7 per cent of all residential dwellings consented in the same time period. Of this, 431 were located in rural zones, with the remainder located in small rural and coastal towns and settlements outside the Rural Urban Boundary.

​Future Urban Land Supply Strategy

The Future Urban Land Supply Strategy forms part of the council’s wider approach to managing Auckland’s growth. The Future Urban Land Supply Strategy provides a strategic approach, indicating when future urban areas will be development ready with live zoning and bulk infrastructure in place. A refreshed Future Urban Land Supply Strategy was adopted on 3 July 2017, incorporating changes through the Auckland Unitary Plan. Rural settlements are included in the refreshed strategy.

The Future Urban Land Supply Strategy sets out the development-ready sequencing of future urban areas. This sequencing reflects a range of considerations specific to each area, including the availability of infrastructure. Special Housing Areas and areas with a live urban zone applied by the Unitary Plan play a significant role in the first five years of the Future Urban Land Supply Strategy. These areas collectively have a potential capacity for over 30,000 dwellings once fully developed.

Delivering the Future Urban Land Supply Strategy

The Delivering the Future Urban Land Supply Strategy update reports on progress made delivering the Future Urban Land Supply Strategy in each broad future urban area. This is reported by:

• progress in the latest monitoring year, 2017/2018
• overall development progress, 2012/2018.

​The future urban areas are comprised of both future urban zone and live urban zone (live zoning). It is anticipated that the future urban zone in each area will be progressively rezoned and developed over time (Figure 6). The greenfield land development process has three phases; these are:

• planning, a future urban zone goes through structure planning and a plan change process to a live urban zone, which allows for urban land use activities.
• infrastructure planning and delivery takes place through all steps of the planning and development phases. The Future Urban Land Supply Strategy aims to align infrastructure and planning delivery timeframes.
• development, live zoning and bulk infrastructure are in place and the creation of new lots and consented dwellings is underway.

Since July 2012, 3,093 new lots have been created in the future urban areas, over half of these (1,762 lots) in 2017/2018. In the same period, 1,887 dwellings have been consented in the future urban areas, over half of these consented in 2017/2018. This shows a significant increase in development activity as areas identified in the first Future Urban Land Supply Strategy adopted in 2015 and through the Housing Accord Special Housing Areas (HASHA) legislation have progressed to the point where infrastructure is in place and homes are being delivered.

​All future urban areas are of a size and scale that will take a long time to build out. Areas sequenced in the second and third decades of the strategy are likely to be only partially built out within the 30-year strategy timeframe.

Business development activity

Approximately 692,000 sqm of additional business floor space was consented in Auckland in 2017/2018. This is 300,000 sqm more than the 2016/2017 monitoring year. 41 per cent of this additional floor space was in centres and another 47.6 per cent in identified business areas outside of centres.

The Waitematā and Howick Local board areas had the greatest increase in consented floor space, with 216,800 sqm and 122,800 sqm respectively. These areas include the growing City Centre and Greater East Tamaki business areas. They were followed by the southern Local board areas; Māngere-Ōtāhuhu, Maungakiekie-Tamaki and Manurewa, with around 50,000 sqm consented in each area.

Table 4: Business floor space consented by Local board area, 2017/ 2018

Across Auckland, there are over 6,000 hectares of land zoned for industrial purposes. The combination for Light Industry and Heavy Industry zones is equivalent to approximately 70 per cent of the total business land mass.

Table 5: Total land area zoned for industrial purposes (as at June 2018) 

Housing affordability

Auckland Council’s Serviceability Affordability Model (SAM)[Note 2] tracks changes in housing affordability over time. It accounts for changes in house prices relative to incomes, interest rates and deposit requirements.

In the period July 2017 to June 2018, the average Auckland home became slightly more affordable as house price growth weakened, interest rates remained low, and household incomes increased slightly. The median home is currently more affordable to the median household income earner than at any time in the last 3.5 years. However, the median dwelling sold in June was still 5 per cent less affordable to the median income household than in the index month of December 2006.

​Note 1: The Research and Evaluation Unit has identified that some attached dwellings are mistakenly counted as detached houses due to data input errors which neither Statistics New Zealand nor Auckland Council can re-evaluate. Therefore, the proportion of attached dwellings may be under-represented.

Note 2: For further information see: The Serviceability Affordability Model, Chief Economist Unit, Auckland Council, First published in Auckland Economic Quarterly (Feb 2017).