Innovation plea to house builders
Tauranga could learn from Auckland’s housing mistakes to prevent a looming crisis, a Bay of Plenty building expert says.
Apartments and townhouses were becoming increasingly popular in the main centres, but ZB Homes general manager Rik Flowerday said the same was not the case for Tauranga.
‘‘Tauranga needs to see more townhouses being built, we need to get away from the greenfields developments and embrace medium density,’’ he said.
‘‘Housing is a continuing issue and it’s something we need to be looking at now, before it becomes a crisis a decade or two down the track.’’
Latest Trade Me Property figures show townhouses, units and apartments were becoming increasingly popular in Auckland and Wellington as more first-home buyers were opting for these properties.
Nationally, townhouses and units reached record average asking prices in June. Townhouses were up 8.6 per cent on last year to $623,650 and units up 6.5 per cent to $445,950.
In Tauranga, house prices soared 464 per cent over the past 16 years, when household income increased just 129 per cent, a SmartGrowth Partnership report revealed this year.
ZB Homes topped the Deloitte Fast 50 index last year with revenue
Rik Flowerday of NB Homes
growth of 1583 per cent, and Flowerday said encouraging innovative thinking was important to evolve the business and sustain its growth.
‘‘We’re a slow industry to adapt and that’s one of our biggest challenges. We’ve got to look overseas for ways to build houses.’’
Auckland’s Hobsonville Point development has a mix of prefabricated, modular and walk-up houses being built – construction methods and styles common in most of the biggest cities in the world.
3D printing was being used overseas – in 2016 Saudi Arabia started talks with a Chinese construction company to build more than 1 million homes using the technology to alleviate its housing shortage.
AUT University Professor John Tookey, a construction industry expert, said 3D printing of homes was possible for New Zealand but a more difficult prospect than in other countries.
‘‘The 3D technology we have currently requires a particular mix of cement, and New Zealand’s geological instability poses a challenge to using that as a tool in construction.’’
Flowerday said 3D printing of houses was a long way away for New Zealand and the first steps into it were modular housing and flat pack construction.
He said automation in flat-pack assembly would also significantly reduce building costs.
‘‘Construction is a very expensive industry because of consents and compliance costs, so there’s not a lot of investment in innovation because of the risk in it,’’ he said.
‘‘Our building code is also a long way off accepting 3D-printed houses. But doing modular housing and building in controlled environments, like flat-pack houses, that kind of construction can fit into the building code as it is.’’
For information on the 2018 Deloitte Fast 50, including entry criteria, how to enter and key dates, visit www.fast50.co.nz