Auckland is experiencing a boom in town-house building, including these homes in Hobsonville Point.

The floor areas of newly consented homes have shrunk by just over a fifth as cities "densify" in response to the housing crisis.

The average floor area of homes consented in 2019 was 42 square metres smaller than the during the peak of 200 square metres in 2010, according to Stats NZ.

But it's not only the impact of cities like Auckland erecting more apartment buildings that's behind the effect.

"The drop in new home size is primarily due to stand-alone houses getting smaller," construction statistics manager Melissa McKenzie said.

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While stand-alone houses still accounted for the majority of new homes, she said, an increasing proportion of townhouses, apartments, retirement village units, and other multi-unit homes consented in recent years had also contributed to smaller overall home sizes.

These included in dense new suburbs in Auckland including the enormous Hobsonville Point suburb on old air force land in the north west of the city.

ABIGAIL DOUGHERTY/STUFF Growing numbers of townhouses, apartments and other multi-unit homes contributed to smaller overall home sizes.

The median floor area of new stand-alone houses consented in 2019 was around 180 square metres.

Apartments and town houses were smaller. The median floor area of multi-unit homes has hovered around 100 square metres, and that included a portion of any shared spaces, such as lobbies.

"In the December 2019 year, over half of all homes consented in Auckland were multi-unit homes, compared with a low point of about 16 per cent in 2010," McKenzie said.



The only parts of the country bucking the trend were Northland and Marlborough, where new homes were on average larger than they were in 2010.

There was huge variation in size across individual areas of cities like Auckland, Stats NZ data showed.

In Howick, to the east of the city, the median floor area of new homes was 217sqm, the largest in Auckland.

The island suburb of Waiheke had a median floor area plan of 207sqm on homes consented in 2019.

The area of the city with the smallest median consented home size was Manurewa, at just 85sqm.

LUZ ZUNIGA/STUFF New homes in Nelson are larger than they were in 2010, as they are in Martinborough. These are the only two areas of the country where the average newly consented home in 2019 was not smaller than it was in 2010.

There was a polarisation of sizes of newly-consented homes between small multi-unit dwellings and standalone homes.

In the Waitematā area, which included some expensive leafy suburbs, the median size of a newly-consented standalone home was a palatial 254sqm.

The Waitematā area also covered Auckland's central city in which many apartment blocks are being consented and built. When those apartments were included, the median floor area dropped to just 93sqm.

SUPPLIED Whole new suburbs are being built on the fringes of Auckland.

Other cities also see the same densification effect.

The median size of a new home consented in Wellington was just 91sqm, compared to 167sqm in the Masterton area.

The median in Christchurch was 123sqm compared to 184sqm in Selwyn, and 195sqm in Ashburton.

The area with the largest median floor area for newly consented homes was Gore, at 239sqm.