Homestar is New Zealand’s leading holistic sustainability certification for new home design and construction. 

Building a Homestar rated home helps to ensure a healthier, warmer, drier, and more comfortable home that uses less power and water than a similar home built to the minimum standard of the New Zealand Building Code. 

It’s widely acknowledged that the Building Code is woefully inadequate, meaning hundreds of thousands of New Zealand homes do not meet basic standards for health, warmth, ventilation, and operating efficiency for our climate.  

A warm, dry, healthy home is a basic human right. This is why the New Zealand Building Council offers Homestar – a certification standard that allows designers, architects, and builders across the residential sector to look ahead to build better futures for our whānau to live, work and play. 

In Homestar there are mandatory minimum requirements focused on keeping your home warm, dry, well-ventilated and operating efficiently.

Some banks recognize a Homestar rating as being a healthier home and are currently offering discounted interest rates for homes achieving a Homestar 6 accreditation or higher. In this way homeowners are able to benefit from lower mortgage repayments as well as lower heating bills.

What is included in a Homestar Assessment?

We start by reviewing you current plans, construction details and specifications. After we have the information we require, we can begin our review process.

Our Homestar assessment is a two stage process.

Step 1: Homestar Review

We model your building in ECCHO to determine the energy performance. Following this we quickly look over the rest of the assessment criteria to give you an estimate of where your building sits. At this stage we can provide you with some recommendations to improve the performance if required.

Step 2: Homestar Assessment

Once we have determined what rating your building is likely to achieve, we refine the ECCHO model to match the building consent drawings, or the completed construction onsite. We then work through the rest of the Homestar assessment calculators, documentation, and scorecard to ensure all the information provided is accurate. Once this is complete we compile all the information and submit your project to the New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) for review and certification.

Assessment Costs

The Homestar Review for a standard standalone home is around $1,800 +gst.

The Homestar Assessment for the same standalone home is around $2,000 +gst.

The above costs are an estimate only, this may vary dependant on location.

Assessment Timing

We will be able to complete the Homestar Review once we have all the information that we require and the deposit has been paid. We aim to have our review back to you within 2-3 weeks.

The final Homestar Assessment will require more coordination and documentation, as such it typically take 3-5 weeks to complete and submit to the NZGBC.

Green Star is Australasia’s largest voluntary sustainability rating system for non-residential buildings, fitouts and communities. 

Greenstar is transforming the way our commercial buildings are designed and built, dramatically reducing New Zealand’s carbon footprint and improving the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders. To help make that happen the NZGBC run the internationally recognised Green Star certification. 

Green Star certification is available for every commercial building type; from schools and hospitals, to office buildings, shopping centres, and industrial warehouses. It can even be used for large-scale community developments.

Certification works toward:

• Reducing the impact of climate change
• Enhancing our health and quality of life
• Restoring and protecting our planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems
• Driving resiliency in buildings, fitouts and communities
• Contributing to market transformation and a sustainable economy

Whether you’re embarking on a new project, planning an entire precinct, or just want to get the most from your existing space, Green Star has a framework to help guide you to a more sustainable result.

New Zealand homes aren’t good enough. All too often, they’re cold, draughty, expensive to heat and make us, our friends and our whānau sick.

HomeFit was created by the New Zealand Green Building Council with the housing sector to help people understand how healthy their home is and support them to make the necessary changes.

The BRANZ House Condition Survey of 2015 showed that many New Zealand homes are lacking decent insulation, ventilation or heating. Poor quality housing is linked to major health issues in New Zealand such as rheumatic fever and asthma.

HomeFit is an inspection-based assessment of the health, comfort, energy efficiency and safety of New Zealand homes. It covers a range of topics that a panel of experts believes to be essential for a home to be liveable, and provides an independent check as to whether the house meets the Healthy Homes Standards. 

HomeFit also includes a higher standard called HomeFit PLUS. Meeting this standard results in a home that is warmer, drier, more comfortable and more energy efficient than HomeFit.

Homes that have been assessed by one of our HomeFit assessors as meeting the standard can be marketed as HomeFit or HomeFit PLUS on sale or rent.