Flat BushAuckland, New Zealand — what you can build here, and what it costs

Zoning

What Flat Bush is zoned

17 zones cover Flat Bush; Mixed Housing Suburban holds 58.6% of its parcels. The zone decides the height, coverage and yard rules below — and it is the first thing that changes what a site is worth building on.

• Mixed Housing Suburban 58.6%
• Mixed Housing Urban 21.7%
• Terrace Housing and Apartment Building 11.6%
• Rural: Countryside Living 4.0%
• Town Centre 1.3%
• 12 other zones 2.6%

Source: Auckland Unitary Plan (Operative in Part). Each address-bearing parcel is assigned the zone covering the largest share of it (same rule as the site report). Shares are given both by parcel count and by land area. standards[].notes is an internal audit trail, not page copy — do not display it; standards[].activity_over_note is the opposite, it is written for readers and explains the permitted dwelling count. Both weightings are printed because they disagree on purpose: share of parcels is how many owners a rule applies to, share of land is how much ground it covers — one large reserve outweighs a whole street on the second and barely registers on the first. The headline figures on this page use share of parcels.

Rules

The permitted envelope in each zone

What you can build as of right, before any resource consent. Exceeding any one standard turns the project into a consent application — it does not make it impossible, it makes it discretionary.

• Mixed Housing Suburban

  58.6% of parcels

  Maximum height

  8 m

  Height in relation to boundary

  2.5m + 45 deg

  Front yard

  3 m

  Side & rear yard

  1 m

  Building coverage

  40%

  Impervious surface

  60%

  Minimum lot size

  400 m²

  Dwellings permitted

  3

• Mixed Housing Urban

  21.7% of parcels

  Maximum height

  11 m

  Height in relation to boundary

  3m + 45 deg (AUP H5.6.5.1)

  Front yard

  2.5 m

  Side & rear yard

  1 m

  Building coverage

  45%

  Impervious surface

  60%

  Minimum lot size

  300 m²

  Dwellings permitted

  3

• Terrace Housing and Apartment Building

  11.6% of parcels

  Maximum height

  16 m

  Height in relation to boundary

  3m + 45 deg (AUP H6.6.6)

  Front yard

  3 m

  Side & rear yard

  0 m

  Building coverage

  50%

  Impervious surface

  70%

  Minimum lot size

  —

  Dwellings permitted

  —

Source: Auckland Unitary Plan (Operative in Part) — indicative, coded by Feasify from the plan text. A dash means the plan sets no such standard for that zone (an apartment zone has no minimum lot size, a business zone has no recession plane) — it does not mean we could not find one. Heights are in metres, never storeys: the plan regulates metres, and dividing one by an assumed floor-to-floor would be our number, not the plan's. Overlays (heritage, viewshaft, special character, height variation) can tighten or relax every line above, and they are parcel-specific: check the site itself before designing to these numbers.

Rental market

What it rents for

Flat Bush spans 17 statistical areas and each has its own median. There is no single "Flat Bush median" to quote — medians cannot be averaged together — so the headline below names the area it belongs to. 10 of those areas have enough bonds lodged to publish one.

Source: MBIE / Tenancy Services bond lodgements, 12-month rolling window ending June 2026. MBIE tenancy bond medians by SA2 (2018 boundaries) over the latest 12-month rolling window ending June 2026 — the window MBIE itself computes the median on, not four quarterly medians averaged together (medians do not average). Medians are reported per SA2 and never averaged across SA2s — a suburb usually spans several SA2s, and averaging medians is not a median of anything. The headline SA2 is the one holding the most of the suburb's parcels. Bedroom counts resting on fewer than 30 bonds lodged in the window are omitted rather than shown as zero. An indication of the rental bond market for this area, based on bonds lodged with Tenancy Services — not a market rent for any individual property. Where a bedroom size shows a span, it is the lowest and the highest of the statistical-area medians — not an average of them; a single figure means only one area has a publishable median for that size. A wide span means the suburb is genuinely mixed, not that the data is noisy. Every figure here stands on at least 30 bonds — counted as bonds lodged during the window (the sample the median is computed on), not the active stock. That is a small sample, and it is the honest one: the median is computed on exactly those bonds. Thinner cells are dropped at source rather than shown as a zero, so nothing on this page sits below that floor. One-bedroom medians are withheld for this window: Omitted for this window: MBIE's own bedroom coding is off in at least one quarter it covers — the 1-bedroom bucket holds up to 67.2% of newly lodged bonds against a long-run 18-23% share, i.e. bonds with an unrecorded bedroom count have been folded into it (MBIE's own NA bucket collapsed from 1,386 cells to 26 when this first showed). A rolling window dilutes a bad quarter, so the test is applied per quarter, not to the window as a whole. Restored automatically once every quarter in the window is back below 30%.

Development contributions

What the council charges per new dwelling

A one-off charge levied at consent stage, per household equivalent unit (HUE). It is the largest council cost most people never see coming — and it is set by where the site sits, not by what you build.

A $0 line is a real zero rate in the policy — that activity is not charged in this funding area. It is not missing data, and the lines still add to the total above.

Auckland Council development contributions per additional dwelling (1 HUE), resolved per parcel from the 2025 policy funding areas. Parcels in the suburb are grouped by their funding-area combination; the headline is the combination covering the most parcels. breakdown itemises that headline combination by activity and funding area — the rates add up to the headline figure, they are not shares of it. Development contributions are one-off per-HUE charges levied by Auckland Council at consent stage; shown here at 2026/27 invoice-year rates under the 2025 policy funding areas, one dwelling = 1 HUE (reductions for small/multi-unit dwellings per Schedule 2). The council's invoice is definitive. Existing dwellings on the site are credited — a two-into-three development pays for the net additional units, not all three. Rates rise each policy year.

Schools

Enrolment zones covering Flat Bush

Percentages are the share of Flat Bush parcels that fall inside each school's enrolment zone. A zone boundary can run down the middle of a street, so treat this as the suburb's shape — the address decides.

Schools sited inside Flat Bush: Baverstock Oaks School, Chapel Downs Junior College (Proposed opening date: 2027-01-01), Chapel Downs School, Mission Heights Junior College, Mission Heights Primary School, Ormiston Junior College, Ormiston Senior College, Sancta Maria Catholic Primary School, Sancta Maria College, Te Kura Rau Iti, Te Uho O Te Nikau Primary School, Tyndale Park Christian School.

Source: Ministry of Education school and enrolment-zone registers. Schools whose enrolment zone covers part of the suburb, and schools physically located in it. EQI = Ministry of Education Equity Index (lower = fewer socio-economic barriers). Deciles were discontinued in 2023 and are deliberately not shown or back-derived. vintage is the date the school roll and zone data itself is current to — not the date this page was generated. EQI is the Ministry's Equity Index — a lower number means students face fewer socio-economic barriers. It replaced deciles in 2023 and we do not back-calculate the old ones. Zones change; schools with no zone enrol from anywhere and do not appear here. This is coverage, not a ranking — we publish no school quality score on this page.

Flood exposure

How much of Flat Bush is mapped as flood-affected

Source: Auckland Council flood plains and flood-prone areas, both layers. "Touches" means any part of the parcel meets a mapped layer — most affected sites are affected at one corner, not throughout, and the maps model overland flow rather than record past floods. This is not a flood assessment and it is not the same thing as insurability.