Dr Chris Litten: BRANZ General Manager of Research on the building sector body developing pre-designed home plans

One of New Zealand's leading building sector bodies is launching standard house designs that will be available to all, in an attempt to bring down costs.

The Building Research Association of New Zealand has developed an accessible plan for building an affordable and sustainable home. 

BRANZ General Manager of Research Dr Chris Litten says housing affordability is a significant issue in New Zealand - and the company's looking to develop a solution.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brian Bridge.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
One size fits all home designs the future of housing
in New Zealand, that is the question. The Building Research
Association of New Zealand Brands is getting ready to launch
its new consent ready home plans. This is in the
next couple of months. It all happened. They say that
the pre designed three bedroom home will save home builders
huge costs on architects. Doctor Chris Lisen is the GM

(00:24):
of Research at Brands and joins me.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Now, hello, hi Roan, how are you going tonight?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Very good? Thank you? Now give us the elevator pitch on.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
This, okay, So we really know that housing affordable is
a real key issue for New Zealanders. So Brands is
all about using our research and testing about create practical
solutions and to do that we've come up with a
development of the next home and it's really to show
New Zealanders that you can build high quality, low carbon
and affordable homes. So we'll have these designs available later

(00:53):
in this year for free download, so anyone can use
it and they'll be consent ready, so you should be
able to use it anywhere across Museeale.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
When you say consent ready, do you mean pre consented
or do you mean what do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (01:06):
So there's a scheme that the government runs called multiproof,
and these designs will be approved by that. So you're
literally about to take the designs, go to your counsel
and say here they are. Can we build a particular
building on what the land I've got? Councilor should say yes?
And that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
What will this save your average house builder?

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, these designs. I think one of the misconceptions is
that high quality and low carbon or sustainable buildings are expensive,
and we're showing them not. So these designs are going
to be about the same price as a standard building
that's going on at the moment, but you get the
added benefits of saying really high quality, which means great
indoor equality, which means you will be healthier your carbon footprint,

(01:48):
if your intint carbon footprint will a gout fifty percent
lower than your standard house, and it will be a
similar price to what you'd be paying normally.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And I mean it sounds too good to be true,
of course is there.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
There is no catch? And that's why we do this
research to really try and understand this sort of stuff. So, yeah,
as I said before, there's a been misconception that high
quality and sustainable means unaffordable, and we're showing that's not.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
What about the you know, each site has its own
quirks and sunlight coming in different directions. How do you
account for all of that?

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, that's really why they still do need to go
to the council to get that consent to say actually,
this is the right place and not about to build
on a floodplain or on a slippery all that's going
to wash my house away or anything like that. So
that is the but that we can't control that. There's
very much having those designs, talking to the council about it,
and it should be very simple to get it all
sorted out with them.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
How do you think this could scale up? You know,
will we have entire suburbs of identical homes?

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, one of the real issues with New Zealand is
we all love to have something different, right, every home
we want look different to their neighbors, and unfortunate it's
just not the way you can build sustainable and build
sustainable and have sort of affordable homes. So these designs
are very much about standardization. They've got standard window sizes,
they do have some standard force structures and layouts. But

(03:07):
the end of the day, I think this really is
if over sees a lot of places are all similar,
they can paint these made, these things can look different,
but it is the way of the future. Really.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
It's about affordability. It's not about flashy.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
It is about affordability. It's not about flashy. But again,
in this case, fleshy means it's really high quality and
you're going to have a great healthy environment inside the home,
which quite a lot of homes don't have.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Are the architects angry at you?

Speaker 1 (03:34):
We've got our own architects on board. We've had architects
pay review these and they're all really excited about what's
going on.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
No one's going to be put out of business.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's not our aim. Our aim is very much about
having some really good designs that people can use. And
we're not going to make anyone use them, of course,
but they're there and available if you want to, you
go for.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
It, all right, Well, leave it there, Thanks so much
for your time. Dr Chris Listen is the GM of
Researcher Brands. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive Listen
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