Whether you’re custom building your dream home from scratch, or making your choice from development house and land packages, a new house offers possibilities not possible in a renovation.
How do you sort out what’s good – or not so good - design that will make your house built from scratch work for you, and last more than a lifetime or two.
Dr David Turner, senior lecturer at Unitec’s school of architecture, says that as we build more neighbourhoods at high density, good design becomes more important. But, he says, architects and group builders have got to start working together.
“Are group builders allergic to architects? Or is it the other way around?” he asks.
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“There are problems on both sides. Architects need to do higher density housing, but they just want to do one off houses, a piece of art. We want to contribute to group builders”
Turner points to some Auckland examples of good group builds that are going on for 20 years old such as Beaumont Quarter . But he’d like to see more good examples in a mix of neighbourhoods, not just luxury inner city developments.
“Luxury [buyers] have all the choice in the world, so it’s got to be good,” he says. “The problem is finding really good housing that understands density at $500,000 – 600,000 prices.”
Turner says there are “truckloads” of international examples, with funding models that include cooperative financing and non-profit models.
New builds are also the best way to achieve sustainability, Turner says. Like many building commentators, Turner is unimpressed with New Zealand’s current building code that specifies such low standards.
“Here, we have an insulating factor of R3.2,” he says. “In England, that figure is 11, in Germany 12 – 14, in Sweden 16. Are we really doing everything we could?”
He’d like to see smaller footprint homes with better design.
But Michelle Costello, who with her husband Vincent owns Jennian Homes Franklin, says that they haven’t seen demand from their customers to sacrifice square footage for higher quality design.
But, she says, now that new townships with master plans demand a slightly higher level of design then better design is being driven that way. Buyers appreciate the benefits of new subdivisions that have a master-planned vision, Costello says, “it’s buying into a community.”
But that doesn’t mean smaller size, as some of their show homes run to 245 sq m or more.
Costello says their customers want value for money for their homes, so only a few are asking for sustainable or eco-features preferring to allocate their budgets to visible features.
She says that while pre-wiring for electric vehicle charging or solar panels is starting to appear, customers are not aware of the Green Building Council Homestar ratings for sustainable performance. But Costello points out that so many passive sustainable features are a given now anyway – north facing windows to collect sunlight, using solar gain for heating and so on.
A trend that is getting stronger is for new home buyers asking for a house that could be split into two, either for a home and income, or as a minor dwelling for elderly parents, grown children or guests.
Costello says that for most customers, space and storage are the two best things about a new build compared to older houses.
“There is a luxury factor for a bigger home,” she says. “Things like garages that can be a room in itself, living rooms that are a mix of family space and teenagers’ space, how living is connected to the kitchen and the outdoors. Things like sculleries that you can close off from the kitchen don’t cost the world to add. ”
Jennian says that up-sized master en-suites that include large shower and free-standing baths are in big demand. Photo / supplied
Costello says up-sizing of master suites is a big trend, with people looking for ones that come with a retreat space or sitting room ( that could also become a nursery for younger families), with big showers and freestanding baths in the en-suite bathroom.
Architect James Wallace of Studio Pacific designed some of the earliest parts of one of Auckland’s best-known master planned communities, Hobsonville Point, so has seen new home buyers embrace well-designed houses and streets. But, like Costello, he says customer demand for sustainable features in their homes has not reached tipping point yet.
“Clients are aware of the issue, but not ready to ask for sustainable [features],” he says. “They think it aspirational, and that the better design or technology has a penalty cost. Even though, if you do the sums, they’d be financially better off.”
Wallace resorts to subversive ways of introducing new ideas – leveraging clients to build in timber in large commercial structures or big residential blocks, for example - by demonstrating cost savings or speedier construction or better earthquake performance.
But he says that new super-insulated buildings have reached a point that other problems are emerging. They have such a tight envelope that they sweat or don’t allow carbon dioxide or moisture to escape, and high spec windows poorly installed in timber framing let the heat escape.
He reckons that the biggest new build benefit is one we’ve not seen yet in New Zealand – insulating the outside of the building, not between the exterior and interior skins. Common in Europe, the building methods is rejected by most Kiwis who associate it with the poor water tightness of similar cladding of the leaky building period. Wallace now heads a research lab within Studio Pacific looking at improving the performance of external house envelopes.
“Changes take forever, it’ll take years, we’re not done it yet,” he says. “But it brings us into the same century as the rest of the world.”
Wallace agrees with Jennian’s Costello that most new home buyers would rather spend their money on second living rooms or sculleries, rather than up-speccing insulation to lower the lifetime running costs of a house.
Both he and Turner think that new building is due for a radical change.
“New Zealand are late adopters of building innovation, we’re 20, 30, even 50 years behind. But we can fight the fight and present new evidence to clients to sell at the science level,” says Wallace.
