Auckland · Kitchens, bathrooms, extensions, reclads
What a renovation in Auckland costs — and the part every other site leaves out.
Every renovation website in the country will give you a price per square metre. None of them will tell you that no official New Zealand source publishes one, or that the government data they are gesturing at does not contain a floor area at all. This page shows the market context that is published, models the labour from real wage data, and labels the rest as judgement.
$163,752
Average declared value of an Auckland dwelling alteration consent, Jun 2025 – May 2026. Across 4,350 consents worth $712.3m in total. It is the applicant’s own estimate, it excludes land, and it is not a quote for your job.
Photography commissioned — plate reserved · July 2026
Start here
There is no official price for renovating a house in New Zealand.
New Zealand publishes no free, official figure for what it costs to paint or renovate a house. Stats NZ publishes the declared value of building consents, which is the applicant’s own estimate, excludes land, and is inconsistent on GST. It publishes cost indexes, which track movement rather than level. And it publishes construction wages. None of them is a price for a job. The only commercial cost libraries — QV CostBuilder and the former Rawlinsons handbook — are paid, licensed products we are not permitted to republish. So where this site shows a range, it says exactly where the range came from, and where it can only show surrounding market context, it says that too.
And there is a specific reason renovation is worse than new-build
Stats NZ publishes building consents in two families. New dwellings carry a consent count, a declared value and a floor area. Dwelling alterations carry a count and a declared value, and no floor area at all.
So a cost per square metre for a new Auckland house can be computed from official data, and a cost per square metre for altering an existing one cannot. Not "is hard to find" — cannot. There is no denominator. Anyone quoting you a renovation rate per square metre is quoting their own experience, which may be excellent, but it is not data and should not be presented as though it were.
What this site does instead
- Published data. Consent values and volumes, cost indexes, trade pay bands. Dated, linked, and never stretched past what the series actually measures.
- A model. Trade labour built up from published median pay rates, with the assumed hours printed so you can change them.
- Judgement. Where only experience can answer, the number is labelled judgement and given as a range with the reasoning attached.
The one real $/m² figure
A new Auckland house consents at about $3,302 per square metre.
This figure is real, it is arithmetic anyone can check, and it is not a renovation cost. It is here because it is the only official per-square-metre number in New Zealand residential construction, and because knowing where it comes from is the fastest way to spot a site that has quietly repurposed it.
In May 2026, Auckland consented 641 new dwellings with a combined declared value of $381.6m across 115,565 m² of floor area. Divide one by the other and you get $3,302/m².
That is the consented build cost of a new house on a site: one set of foundations, one scaffold, one roof, no demolition, no working around a family, nothing hidden behind existing lining, and no tie-in to a building that is already there. It is the efficient case.
It is genuinely useful in exactly one place — as a lower-bound reference point when you are adding floor area. That is what the extension page does with it. Used anywhere else it will mislead you, and used as a renovation rate it will mislead you badly.
Stats NZ — Building consents issued — May 2026 (new dwellings, Auckland) · May 2026
The model
What can be built up honestly: the labour.
Trade pay bands are published, current and Auckland-specific. So rather than invent a total, this site builds the labour component from real median pay rates and prints the assumed hours — the part that is judgement — where you can see and change them. The scope modelled below is a kitchen replaced, a bathroom rebuilt, one non-structural wall removed and the affected rooms relined and repainted.
| Trade | Median hourly pay | Assumed hours (judgement) | Wage cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carpenter | $31.25 | 220 | $6,875 |
| Cabinet maker | $33.65 | 90 | $3,029 |
| Painter and decorator | $29.81 | 70 | $2,087 |
| Plasterer | $30.77 | 60 | $1,846 |
| Construction manager | $59.13 | 45 | $2,661 |
| Wall and floor tiler | $32.21 | 45 | $1,449 |
| Electrician | $41.35 | 40 | $1,654 |
| Plumber | $35.10 | 32 | $1,123 |
Pay rates are the published median for each trade. The hours are this site’s judgement for the scope described above, not a measured figure — change the hours and the answer changes, which is exactly why no one can quote a renovation from a floor area.
Tertiary Education Commission — Tahatū Career Navigator · retrieved 2026-07-30
Photography commissioned — plate reserved · July 2026
From a wage to a price
The table above totals $20,724 of wages across 602 labour hours for the scope described above. That is not what the work costs you. A charge-out rate also has to cover ACC levies, annual and sick leave, vehicles, tools, insurance, supervision, quoting time that never converts, office overhead and margin.
Across New Zealand trades a charge-out rate of 1.8× to 2.6× the wage is the ordinary range. That multiplier is judgement — no official source publishes it — so it is stated here rather than buried, and you can substitute your own. Applying it gives a modelled labour component of $37,303 – $53,882.
Materials, fittings, appliances, consent and inspection fees, scaffolding, skips, temporary works and the builder’s margin all sit on top of that. The labour component is usually the largest single line in a renovation, which is why a decade of labour cost rises has moved renovation prices far more than any material has.
Modelled on this site from Tahatū Career Navigator pay bands — labour only, not a quote · July 2026
The cluster
By job, and by the forces underneath the price.
Each page below carries its own sourced figures, its own model, and its own statement of what it cannot tell you. Start with the job you are actually doing.
Kitchens
What actually moves a kitchen number: whether services move, whether a wall moves, cabinetry, benchtop, appliances.
Bathrooms
Why a bathroom costs more per square metre than almost any room in the house. Waterproofing, tiling, moving fixtures.
Extensions
Adding floor area, and the one honest use of the $3,302/m² new-build benchmark: as a floor, not a forecast.
Recladding
The highest-stakes decision in Auckland renovation, and the national failure data behind it.
The Auckland market
$712.3m of alterations across 21 local boards, and a 6.5× spread nobody has written up.
Why it costs more now
Construction cost is up 21–25% in real terms over a decade. Paint materials are down 9%. It is not the materials.
Trade rates
All 13 building trades: published pay bands, Auckland live job-ad counts, training duration.
What to do
How to get a number you can actually rely on.
- 01
Write the scope down before you ask anyone for a price
A page of scope beats a floor plan. List what moves, what stays, what gets replaced and what you are prepared to live with. Ambiguity in the scope is where quote differences come from.
- 02
Fix the allowances yourself
Set the appliance, tapware, tile and benchtop allowances as dollar figures and give the same figures to everyone. Otherwise you are comparing three different jobs.
- 03
Establish the consent question early
Whether the work needs a building consent changes the programme, the paperwork and the price. Structural and weathertightness work is restricted building work and needs a Licensed Building Practitioner.
- 04
Ask what is excluded, in writing
The useful question is never "how much" — it is "what is not in this number". Scaffolding, disposal, consent fees, temporary kitchens, engineer’s fees and making good are the usual answers.
- 05
Hold a contingency and say so out loud
10–20% on an existing house. Judgement, not data. A builder who tells you it is unnecessary is telling you something about the builder.
Proof
What this site will not show you.
There are no completed jobs to photograph yet and no reviews to quote, so the photography on this site is marked as reserved and the review section is empty. Inventing either would tell you exactly how much to trust the figures. Judge the site on the checkable part: every number carries its source and its date, and you can follow each one back to the government release it came from.
Verified reviews will appear here once the first Auckland jobs are complete — with a first name, a suburb and the work that was done.
Questions people actually ask
Why is one quote double the other?
Almost always because the two builders have priced different jobs. Check four things before you compare the totals: whether both allow for the same demolition and disposal, whether both include the consent fee and inspections, whether the fittings allowance is the same number (a kitchen with a $4,000 appliance allowance and one with a $16,000 allowance are not the same kitchen), and whether one has priced structural work the other has assumed away. Then check whether both are fixed price or charge-up. A charge-up quote is an estimate, and it is normal for it to be the lower of the two on paper.
Only after those four are aligned does the difference tell you anything about the builders.
Can you just give me a cost per square metre for a renovation?
No, and nobody honest can from official data. Stats NZ records the consent count and the declared value for dwelling alterations, but it does not record floor area for them — so there is no denominator to divide by. The new-dwelling series does carry floor area, which is why this site can quote $3,302/m² for a new Auckland house and cannot quote anything comparable for altering one. Renovation also has no stable unit: opening one load-bearing wall can cost more than lining four rooms.
What does the average consent value actually tell me?
That across 4,350 Auckland alteration consents in the 12 months to May 2026, the middle of the market was declaring around $163,752 of work. It tells you the scale of project that actually gets consented in Auckland. It does not tell you what your job costs, because it is a self-declared estimate made before the work started, it excludes land, and it mixes a Waitematā villa reconfiguration with a Papakura bedroom addition. The spread by local board is the more useful read.
Do I need consent to move a wall?
If the wall is load-bearing or a bracing element, yes — and that work is restricted building work, so a Licensed Building Practitioner must carry it out or supervise it. Removing a genuinely non-structural partition can sometimes be exempt, but "non-structural" is a determination about your house, not a guess from a floor plan: bracing walls often do not look structural. Start with the consent thresholds, then get it confirmed. Only Auckland Council can tell you what applies to your address.
Is it cheaper to renovate or to move?
The honest answer is that they are different risks, not just different prices. Moving has largely fixed, knowable costs — agent commission, legal, moving, and the price gap between the two houses. Renovating has an unknowable tail: what is behind the lining, what the ground is like, what the council asks for. If you are weighing it up, price the move properly first, because it is the side you can actually cost. Then treat the renovation number as a range with a contingency, not a figure.
How much contingency should I hold?
On a renovation of an existing house, holding 10–20% of the contract sum back as contingency is the ordinary practice, and the older and more altered the house, the higher in that band you should sit. That range is judgement, not published data — it is stated here so you can argue with it. The reason it exists is that renovation is the only construction work where a material part of the scope is invisible when the price is set.
Who actually does the work?
An Auckland trade partner, and that partner is being confirmed. Until they are named on this site, the site claims no Licensed Building Practitioner number, no guarantee and no trade-association membership — because much of this work is restricted building work and an unbacked claim about who can legally do it would be the worst thing this site could publish.
Consent and zoning information on this page describes the published rules and the Auckland Unitary Plan zoning map. It is not a determination about your property, and only Auckland Council can confirm what applies to your address. Much of the work described here is restricted building work under the Building Act 2004, which must be carried out or supervised by a Licensed Building Practitioner. This site does not yet name the trade partner who would do the work, and until it does it claims no licence, guarantee or membership.
One route from here
If you want a number for your house rather than the market’s.
Send the scope. You will get an honest read on whether the budget and the job match, in writing, and if they do not match you will be told that instead of being booked for a site visit. One conversation about one job — no mailing list.
From the same desk
If the job turns out to be paint rather than building work, start on the painting side instead.
Paintwork Auckland