How home approvals compare in New Zealand and Australia

New Zealand's consent rate first overtook Australia's calculated approval rate in 2020, at 7.5 dwellings per 1,000 residents compared with 6.89. Australia had recorded the higher rate in every year from 2002 to 2019.

New Zealand's lead reached 2.43 dwellings per 1,000 residents in the year ended January 2023. The gap then narrowed, with rates of 6.4 in New Zealand and 6.45 in Australia in 2025, followed by 6.9 and 6.99 respectively in 2026.

Australia was marginally ahead in 2026. New Zealand's published rate of 6.9 represents an unrounded result between 6.85 and just under 6.95, which remains below Australia's calculated rate of 6.99.

The two measures are compiled differently:

• New Zealand: published by Stats NZ, and divides dwelling consents by the estimated resident population.
• Australia: calculated for this article by adding up original monthly approvals from February through January, then dividing by the estimated resident population at the prior December.

These methods are closely aligned but not identical, so small differences should not be interpreted as evidence of a substantial lead.

About 75% of Auckland's residential land was upzoned to medium or high density when the Auckland Unitary Plan took effect in November 2016. Before the reform, 95% of the city's residential land was zoned for low-density housing.

A 2024 University of Auckland working paper estimates that Auckland rents in 2022 were 21.6% below a modelled no-reform level. The estimate uses a synthetic-control method and a characteristics-adjusted rent index based on Stats NZ's Integrated Data Infrastructure. The paper states that the findings are not official statistics.

This is the preferred specification, which excludes Rotorua from the comparison group; including it gives a larger effect of 26.1% below the counterfactual, and the authors describe the smaller, Rotorua-excluded figure as the conservative choice.

The strength of the statistical result varies across the paper's tests. Auckland ranked first in the preferred placebo comparison but twelfth under a stricter one-tailed test.

The Australian Productivity Commission's July 2026 interim report cites a 2026 update estimating rents 23% lower than the counterfactual eight years after the reform.

Under New Zealand's Medium Density Residential Standards, which took effect in July 2022, up to three homes per site and three storeys were permitted without resource consent where all standards were met.

The standards came out of 2021 legislation and applied to tier 1 territorial authorities: greater Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch, with Rotorua added later.

The baseline standards allowed:

• a maximum of three units per site;
• a maximum height of 11 metres, plus one metre for a pitched roof;
• a maximum building coverage of 50% of the net site area;
• minimum setbacks of 1.5 metres at the front and one metre at the sides and rear; and
• a minimum outdoor living space for each unit.

Councils could vary these settings where defined qualifying matters applied.

Australia's National Planning Reform Blueprint was agreed by National Cabinet on 16 August 2023 and published by Treasury in August 2024. It sets out 10 measures.

Measure 5 commits planning ministers to streamlining approval pathways and prioritising planning control amendments that promote medium- and high-density housing in well-located areas close to public transport, amenities and employment.

States and territories implement the measures and report to National Cabinet twice yearly.

The two frameworks are not directly comparable. New Zealand introduced a national statutory baseline, while Australia's blueprint coordinates reforms led by individual states and territories and does not set a uniform national zoning standard.

The Australian Productivity Commission's July 2026 interim report proposes allowing developments of up to three storeys across residential land, subject to exceptions for environmental protection, natural hazard overlays and heritage listings.

The proposal appears in Reform direction 2.1. The Commission states that exceptions for environmental protection, natural hazards and heritage should be supported by benefit-cost analysis.

The Commission states that it prioritised reforms with the strongest evidence of delivering large increases in housing supply, drawing on estimates of zoned and commercially feasible capacity and on quasi-experimental studies of supply responses in Australia or New Zealand.

The interim report finds that broad upzoning is more likely to produce a larger supply response than reform limited to selected sites or areas.

Auckland's estimated results cannot be applied directly to Australian cities. The Commission cautions that different lot sizes, development economics and local conditions may produce different outcomes. It cites a submission noting that Sydney's lot sizes differ from Auckland's and could affect the scale of the supply response.

The Commission's city-specific analysis is expected in its final report, due in March 2027.

The interim report also identifies two important limitations:

• Many upzoned sites may not be commercially feasible to develop, so the short-run supply response is often smaller than the scale of the zoning change implies.
• Land-use reform is more effective when coordinated with housing-enabling infrastructure, land availability and market development.