Plan Change 120 (PC120) signals a turning point in Auckland’s housing strategy. After several years of broad, uniform intensification under Plan Change 78 and the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS), Council is now steering the city toward a more selective model of growth, one that asks harder questions about where density genuinely works and where it does not.
At its core, PC120 reshapes how housing supply is distributed. Development is increasingly directed toward the city centre, metropolitan and town centres, and rapid transit corridors, while areas facing flood risk, coastal instability, or infrastructure constraints are subject to tighter controls. The result is a planning environment that is less even-handed, but far more consequential for land values, feasibility, and investment strategy.
For investors and developers, this change marks the end of relying on blanket zoning uplift to carry returns. Opportunity now sits in understanding location, timing, and infrastructure readiness, and in delivering projects that align with the city’s long-term spatial logic.
From a housing equity and economic productivity perspective, much of this shift makes sense. Concentrating housing near transport, employment, and services reduces household transport costs, improves access to opportunity, and supports a more efficient urban economy. Likewise, the stronger emphasis on hazard management responds to the uncomfortable reality that past planning decisions have allowed risk to be embedded in the housing stock, with future residents left to pay the price.
Where PC120 falters is in its handling of transition.
The removal of MDRS-enabled development rights has left many investors and small-scale developers navigating uncertainty after having acted in good faith under the previous framework. Projects mid-design or mid-feasibility have been forced to reassess assumptions, timelines, and viability. Larger operators can often absorb this disruption. Smaller players, who make up a significant share of Auckland’s incremental housing supply, frequently cannot.
This instability carries broader consequences. Planning uncertainty increases risk premiums, narrows participation in the development market, and ultimately undermines affordability by concentrating delivery in fewer hands.
Our submission to Auckland Council acknowledged the merits of PC120’s direction while calling for practical refinements to improve outcomes. These included clearer transitional provisions to protect legitimate development expectations, stronger alignment between zoning and infrastructure delivery, and mechanisms that link increased development intensity to demonstrably better housing outcomes.
“A planning system that prioritises speed over certainty delivers more volatility than it does affordability,” says APIA General Manager, Sarina Gibbon. “If Auckland wants more homes that people actually want to live in, policy needs to reward quality, location, and long-term resilience, not just unit counts.”
Council’s own analysis reinforces this point. The large dwelling numbers associated with PC120 represent theoretical capacity rather than a forecast of homes that will be built. Infrastructure constraints, market conditions, and feasibility all shape what ultimately reaches the ground. For investors, those figures function best as indicators of potential rather than guarantees.
PC120 also reopens long-running debates about special character overlays and neighbourhood amenity. Some protections remain appropriate, particularly where they safeguard genuinely distinctive urban fabric. Others warrant closer scrutiny to ensure they are not being used to resist change in areas well suited to growth.
The challenge ahead is not choosing between intensification and liveability, or between investors and communities. Auckland’s future depends on reconciling these interests through stable, evidence-based planning that supports both housing delivery and urban quality.
That outcome will require informed participation from those directly engaged in the housing system.
APIA exists to provide that voice. For Auckland investors and developers who want to protect their interests while contributing to a city that remains resilient, productive, and inclusive, now is the moment to engage.
Join APIA and help strengthen an advocacy base that supports sound housing policy and long-term prosperity for Auckland.
Because the shape of Auckland’s housing future will be decided by those willing to participate in it.
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