Guides
Renovation guides for Auckland
Four things that decide how a renovation goes and are almost never written down honestly: how to make three quotes comparable, what fixed price and charge-up each actually risk, where the programme really slips, and what a 1920s villa needs. No email required for any of them.
The guides
Start where your question is
How to compare three renovation quotes
Six questions that force three quotes onto the same scope, plus a modelled labour component — 134 trade hours priced from published pay bands.
Fixed price or charge-up
Who carries the unknowns, what each basis costs you for that, and the hybrid most old houses actually need.
The real sequence, and where projects slip
Nine stages in the order they happen, and the four points where weeks disappear. Only one is about building speed.
Renovating a 1920s Auckland villa
Piles, load paths, borer, wiring, lead paint and the character overlay question — in the order they cost money.
How these are written
Sourced where it matters, labelled where it cannot be.
Every factual claim in these guides carries its source and its date at the point it is made. Where a number can only come from judgement — an hours assumption, a charge-out multiplier, a sensible contingency — it is labelled judgement and the reasoning is on the page so you can disagree with it.
None of them asks for an email, and none of them is a lead magnet with the useful part removed. The datasets behind them, and what could not be found.
Stats NZ — Building consents issued — Auckland local boards, May 2026 release · May 2026
Stats NZ — Building consents issued — Auckland region, houses (new): value and floor area, May 2026 · May 2026
From the same desk
If the job is really a repaint rather than a renovation, the sibling site covers it on the same rules.
Paintwork Auckland