Shaking up the rules: Amendments to the earthquake-prone buildings regime
Shaking up the rules: Amendments to the earthquake-prone buildings regime
Monday 28 September, 2026
In September 2025, the Government announced that it was taking steps to improve the earthquake-prone building system in New Zealand. The Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill (EPB Bill) was introduced on 9 December 2025 and a year after the initial announcement it unanimously passed the third reading. It now awaits royal assent.
At the third reading, Hon Simon Watts (Minister for Building and Construction) described the EPB Bill as being “about taking unnecessary costs and red tape off building owners and communities while keeping the earthquake-prone building system focused on protecting life safely”.
On the EPB Bill coming into effect, approximately 2,900 buildings across New Zealand will no longer be classified as earthquake-prone, reducing the estimated remediation costs by $8.2 billion.
Buildings in Auckland, the Chatham Islands and the upper North Island low seismic zone will no longer be designated as earthquake-prone following royal assent.
Once the EPB Bill comes into force on 1 July 2027, earthquake-prone building status will be based on specific building types and locations. To be classified as earthquake-prone, a building must be located in a medium or high seismic zone and must be either constructed of unreinforced masonry or made of heavy materials and three storeys or higher. Some buildings will have no remediation requirement while the remediation requirements for others will be based on the actual risk profile of the building.
Property impacts
These are significant changes that will have impacts across all aspects of property, including:
- property owners may have reduced or no remediation obligations;
- earthquake-prone status may have little or no impact on certain property transactions;
- depending on their wording, seismic-related provisions in leases may now be redundant or may no longer align with the legal position; and
- mortgagees may look to revise their lending requirements.
Local Government impacts
For territorial authorities, this is not a minor tidy-up. It rewrites who is captured by the regime, how risk is assessed and what councils must do to identify, notify and monitor earthquake-prone building systems going forward.
- Councils' ability to identify new earthquake-prone buildings after the initial identification period will be significantly narrowed, retaining only a limited residual power in defined circumstances.
- Councils will move to a simpler Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment approved warning sign in place of the formal earthquake-prone building notice. Councils will also be able to notify owners of earthquake-prone building status by letter, rather than by a prescribed statutory form.
For many councils, particularly in low seismic zones, this reform will substantially shrink the earthquake-prone building register and associated compliance burden. For other councils, the work continues but with a sharper focus on genuine life-safety risk.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment will be releasing guidance on the new legislation ahead of the July 2027 commencement. We will continue to monitor the developments. However if you have a specific building, transaction or lease where these changes may be relevant, please contact us and we will be happy to assist.
