City Greenlit For More Medium-density Homes
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Invercargill's rules around residential development are changing — and from this Friday, they'll be locked in for good.
Plan Change 2: Housing and Code of Practice becomes fully operative on October 2, rewriting parts of the Invercargill City District Plan to allow greater density and a wider variety of housing types in the Residential 1 and Residential 1A Zones. The change has been years in the making and cleared its final hurdle without a single appeal.
Invercargill City Council consenting and environment group manager Jonathan Shaw said the city wasn't short of residential land — just short of options for what could be built on it.
"We know Invercargill has enough residentially zoned land overall, but what we have been missing is greater choice in the types of homes that can be provided, particularly smaller, attached and medium-density housing closer to the city centre," Shaw said.
That's the gap Plan Change 2 is designed to close. Terraced housing, smaller attached homes, apartments — the kinds of dwellings that tend to cluster closer to a city centre rather than sprawling out to its edges — become more viable under the new rules.
"Plan Change 2 creates more opportunities for those types of homes to be developed. Over time, that could mean a greater variety of housing for people at different stages of life, including people looking to downsize or wanting a smaller, lower-maintenance home," Shaw said.
The changes don't just open the door wider — they also bring in provisions around urban design and managing the effects of more intensive development. Shaw said the intention was to give people more options for how residential land could be developed, while making sure the quality of the homes and neighbourhoods created was considered. In other words, more density, but not at the cost of liveability.
The process has been thorough. The plan change was publicly notified in January 2026, drawing 19 submissions and three further submissions. A hearing followed in May, with an independent hearing panel approving the change — with amendments — and publicly notifying its decision on Monday July 13. The appeal window closed without anyone challenging it.
That clean run through the process means no delays, no legal wrangling, and no uncertainty for developers or landowners trying to plan ahead. From Friday, the new rules are live and sitting inside the District Plan on the council's website.