Tiny home rules in New Zealand

Which question comes first?

If it is on wheels, start with whether it is a building at all, because nothing else follows until you know. MBIE's test has two halves and both must be true: the home must be immovable and occupied by people on a permanent or long-term basis. Answer that on tiny house on wheels.

If it sits on the ground, the question is floor area and whether it has a bathroom. Anything with a toilet, shower, basin or drinking-water tank cannot use a Schedule 1 exemption at all — MBIE is explicit that detached buildings under Schedule 1 "cannot contain sanitary facilities or facilities for the storage of potable water". That pushes you to the 70 m² granny flat exemption or to a building consent.

Three things that are true whichever rule you are under

• The Building Code always applies.MBIE: "All building work must comply with the Building Code, even if it does not require a building consent." An exemption removes the council's check, not the standard.
• Connecting to services needs a consent."If you are planning to connect your tiny house to utility services, such as storm water or foul water, you will need to obtain a building consent."
• Your district plan is a separate question. Building consent and resource consent run under different Acts with different definitions. See resource consent and district plans.

What is not on these pages

Figures circulate online for when the granny flat exemption commenced, how much it saves, what a council consent fee averages and how long it takes. They are not here. The official pages that would confirm them refuse automated requests, so nobody here has read them at the source, and we do not repeat numbers we have not read. Our editorial policy explains how that works and how to tell us if we have something wrong.