MDRS and Plan Change 120: What Actually Applies to Your Auckland Property in 2026
Last updated: May 2026
Quick answer: The Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) were withdrawn from Auckland on 9 October 2025 and replaced by Plan Change 120 (PC120). MDRS no longer applies — and most online guides still teaching those rules are now obsolete for Auckland.
If you’ve been reading about subdividing your Auckland section under the Medium Density Residential Standards, you’ve been reading about a framework that no longer applies here. Auckland Council partially withdrew Plan Change 78 — the plan change that introduced the MDRS into the Auckland Unitary Plan — at 5pm on 9 October 2025. Christchurch followed the same path. Everywhere else in the country, the MDRS still stand. In Auckland and Christchurch, they do not.
The replacement is Plan Change 120 (PC120), notified on 3 November 2025. Some parts of PC120 are already in legal force. Most of it is still in submissions and hearings, and the rules have been amended once by Parliament already in 2026. The framework keeps moving, which is why the article you’re reading carries an “updated” date at the top — we’ll keep refreshing it as the picture changes.
This piece covers the timeline, what PC120 actually introduces, what’s in force today, and what it means for anyone weighing up a subdivision, intensification, or development project on an Auckland section right now.
The Short Answer for Auckland Property Owners
MDRS was withdrawn from Auckland on 9 October 2025. It’s been replaced by Plan Change 120, which is still being worked through submissions and hearings during 2026. Subdivision and intensification are still possible — but the framework is in transition. The rule-of-thumb era is over, and case-by-case feasibility is the only reliable way to know what your specific property can do today.
Important: Some PC120 rules have immediate legal effect — particularly the natural hazard controls that took force on 3 November 2025. Other rules are still under submission and may be amended before PC120 is made operative. Check your property against the current Auckland Council planning maps before relying on any general guidance. See Auckland Council’s PC120 page for property-specific information.
How We Got Here: The MDRS Timeline
The Medium Density Residential Standards weren’t an Auckland idea. They were national policy, introduced by the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021. The Act required Tier 1 councils — Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch — to enable up to three dwellings of up to three storeys on most residential sites as a permitted activity. No resource consent required for the density itself. The thinking was simple: more homes, faster, less red tape at the council counter.
Auckland Council brought the MDRS into the Auckland Unitary Plan through Plan Change 78, notified on 18 August 2022. That’s when most of the “3×3” guides you can still find online were written.
Why Auckland Pulled Out
Two things changed the picture. The Auckland Anniversary floods of late January 2023 made it brutally obvious that the MDRS had no mechanism to stop intensification in flood-prone land. The Council had to keep approving three-storey developments in places that had just gone underwater. And the 2023 coalition agreement reopened the question of whether councils could opt out.
Parliament passed the necessary amendments in August 2025. The Council’s Policy and Planning Committee voted on 24 September 2025 to endorse PC120 and to use those new powers. At 5pm on 9 October 2025, Plan Change 78 was partially withdrawn. MDRS stopped applying as a permitted activity in Auckland’s residential zones.
The Timeline So Far
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 18 Aug 2022 | PC78 notified — MDRS introduced into the Auckland Unitary Plan |
| Aug 2025 | RMA amended — Auckland and Christchurch given option to withdraw MDRS |
| 9 Oct 2025, 5pm | PC78 partially withdrawn — MDRS no longer applies in Auckland |
| 3 Nov 2025 | PC120 notified — hazard rules take immediate legal effect |
| 19 Dec 2025 | First submission period closed |
| Feb 2026 | Government announces reduction in required housing capacity |
| 2 Apr 2026 | Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Act passed under urgency — capacity floor reduced to ~1.4m homes |
| 14 May 2026 | Summary of Decisions Requested published |
| Jun–Jul 2026 | Council to consider amendments to PC120 |
| ~Aug 2026 | Second public notification of PC120 expected |
| 2026–2027 | Independent Hearings Panel process |
| ~2027 (est.) | PC120 final operative date |
💡 Homeowner tip: If a guide on subdivision is dated before October 2025 and mentions MDRS as your default pathway, treat it as a historical document for Auckland. The rules it describes no longer apply here.
What Plan Change 120 Actually Does
PC120 — formally Plan Change 120: Housing Intensification and Resilience — replaces blanket “3×3” rights with a targeted approach. Instead of opening up most residential sites to three-storey development, the new framework concentrates density where it can be serviced: around train stations, along the busier transport corridors, and inside the larger town centres. It also pulls back from places that shouldn’t be intensified at all, like flood plains and unstable coastal land.
Here’s the four-part architecture, in plain terms.
Walkable Catchments Around Western Line Stations
PC120 enables much taller buildings within walking distance of five Western Line train stations: Maungawhau (Mount Eden), Kingsland, Morningside, Baldwin Avenue, and Mt Albert. The first three sit on the new City Rail Link, so the government has mandated up to 15 storeys around them. Baldwin Avenue and Mt Albert can go up to 10 storeys. These mandates are locked in by law — Council can’t withdraw them.
Frequent Transport Corridors
Around 24 frequent bus corridors are flagged for higher density extending roughly 200 metres back from the route. Think the major arterials that already carry the busy routes. These corridors are exactly the parts of PC120 most likely to shrink in the August 2026 amendments — the government has signalled it wants the lower-ranked bus corridors reassessed.
Suburban Centres
The identified suburban centres are zoned for up to six storeys. These are the smaller town centres — places like Glen Eden, New Lynn, Henderson, and Papatoetoe — where mid-rise apartments fit the scale.
Hazard-Based Downzoning
Around 12,000 Auckland properties have been downzoned because they sit in flood-prone, coastal erosion, coastal inundation, or landslide-risk areas. This is the part of PC120 that took immediate legal effect on notification. More on that in the next section.
The existing zone names are also being reshuffled. Single House Zone and Mixed Housing Suburban Zone are being replaced with a modified Mixed Housing Urban zone, a modified Terrace Housing and Apartment Buildings (THAB) zone, and a new Low Density Residential Zone. In most parts of the modified MHU zone, the familiar three-dwelling, three-storey development remains permitted — but subject to qualifying matters, hazard overlays, and the 18-metre setback rule for any 10–15 storey development next to lower-intensity land.
“PC120 isn’t a blanket replacement for MDRS. It’s a fundamentally different design philosophy — density where the infrastructure justifies it, restraint where the risk is too high. For homeowners, that means the answer to ‘what can I build?’ depends much more on where your property sits than it did under MDRS.”
— Sonder Architecture Team
Hazard-Based Downzoning: The Part That’s Already in Force
Most of PC120 is still proposed. The hazard rules are not. Under section 86B(3) of the Resource Management Act 1991, plan changes that respond to significant risk to public health and safety can take immediate legal effect on notification. That’s exactly what happened on 3 November 2025.
From that date, the natural hazard provisions in PC120 — covering flood plains, overland flow paths, coastal inundation zones, coastal erosion areas, and landslide-risk land — have applied to consent applications regardless of where PC120 sits in its hearings process. Approximately 12,000 Auckland properties were directly affected by zoning or overlay changes triggered by these rules.
If your property is in any of these categories, your development envelope is narrower than it was under the previous version of the Auckland Unitary Plan. In some cases, intensification is no longer permitted at all. In others, additional resource consent triggers apply, or floor levels must be raised, or building forms restricted.
Important: If your property is on a flood plain, near a watercourse, on a coastal site, or on hill country, check the current Auckland Council PC120 planning maps before assuming any development potential. Hazard-based rules apply now — not after PC120 is operative. You can search your address through Auckland Council’s PC120 page and on the GeoMaps planning viewer.
This is also the most settled part of PC120. The government’s signalled amendments are aimed at the upzoning provisions — capacity numbers, corridor density, the ten-kilometre starting point. The hazard rules are doing exactly what the Council asked Parliament for the power to do, and the political pressure to weaken them is essentially zero.
What This Means If You Were Planning to Subdivide Under MDRS
The answer depends on exactly how far along you were on 9 October 2025.
If You Already Had a Live Consent
If you held a resource consent or building consent that relied on MDRS, the protective mechanism was the Certificate of Compliance pathway — and it closed at 5pm on 9 October 2025. Auckland Council waived the usual $1,850 application fee for these in the lead-up to that date. If you didn’t lodge one before the deadline, MDRS can no longer be relied on, regardless of when your application was made. Existing resource consents that relied on MDRS as a permitted activity may need an amendment if development hasn’t started. Speak to your planner or architectural designer about your specific consent.
If Your Project Was Still at Concept Stage
MDRS is no longer available to you. Feasibility has to be reassessed under three overlapping layers:
- The existing Auckland Unitary Plan zoning (modified by PC120)
- PC120 hazard overlays that took immediate effect
- Qualifying matters — the planning rules that constrain intensification for heritage, special character, infrastructure capacity, or natural hazard reasons. See our piece on heritage overlay rules in Auckland for what this looks like in practice.
Common Scenarios
A three-unit project on an MHU site: often still possible under the modified Mixed Housing Urban zone, where 3×3 development remains a permitted activity. But check the qualifying matters — heritage, character, or hazard overlays can change the answer. Our overview of duplex design in Auckland covers the smaller-scale version of this.
A four-or-more-unit project: resource consent is required, but the PC120 height rules near transit may make the maths work better than they did under MDRS — especially near the five Western Line stations or on a frequent corridor.
A flood-affected site: likely downzoned. Check the PC120 map viewer first. In many flood plain areas, intensification has been removed entirely. In others, raised floor levels and other conditions apply.
A smaller project: if you’re thinking about a granny flat, a garage conversion, or other work that doesn’t push into a third dwelling, MDRS was never the relevant rule anyway. Our guide on what you can build without consent in NZ covers the Schedule 1 thresholds that apply.
An Illustrative Scenario
Illustrative example — not an actual client project. Used to show how the current feasibility question is shaped, not the specific outcome.
Take a hypothetical 650m² section in the Mixed Housing Urban zone, in a suburb served by a frequent bus corridor — somewhere along New North Road, say. Under MDRS, the rule of thumb was straightforward: three units, three storeys, permitted activity, build to the recession plane and height-in-relation-to-boundary controls. Under PC120, the question gets layered.
First, the zone check. The site is now in modified MHU under PC120. 3×3 development remains a permitted activity here — so on the face of it, the three-unit project is still on the table.
Second, the hazard overlay check. Pull the property up on the PC120 map viewer. Is there an overland flow path crossing the rear of the section? A coastal inundation overlay? A flood plain designation? Any of these can constrain the building footprint or require raised floor levels — and they apply now, not after PC120 is operative.
Third, the qualifying matters check. Heritage overlay? Special character area (think Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden, Parnell)? Infrastructure capacity constraints? These constrain intensification in specific locations and can change a permitted activity into a discretionary one.
Fourth, the Watercare capacity check. Is the wastewater network in your street able to take additional connections? This is more of a feasibility blocker than people realise — particularly in older parts of the isthmus where the combined sewer is at capacity.
Fifth, the bulk and location maths. Height in relation to boundary, daylight admission planes, setbacks, outlook space — these still need to resolve. PC120 hasn’t relaxed those.
What changes between MDRS and PC120 here isn’t the outcome — it’s the process. Under MDRS, the feasibility question fit on a coaster. Under PC120, it fits in a feasibility report. That’s the work.
Why the Rule-of-Thumb Era Is Over
Under MDRS, you could roughly say: “three storeys, three units, most residential sites.” That was the heuristic, and it was right often enough to be useful. Under PC120, that heuristic doesn’t work in Auckland anymore. Feasibility now depends on multiple overlays interacting with each other — zone, hazard, qualifying matter, infrastructure, design controls. Two sections on the same street can return completely different answers.
This is the bridge to the next section. If you can’t read your property’s potential off a one-line rule, you need a proper site-specific assessment instead.
How to Get a Proper Feasibility Answer
Under MDRS, a quick rule of thumb could tell you whether your site had subdivision potential. Under PC120, that doesn’t work — feasibility depends on which overlays apply to your specific property, which qualifying matters are in play, and whether Watercare can service additional units.
That’s exactly why our free feasibility report exists. We do the site-specific check for you: zone, hazard overlays, qualifying matters, infrastructure capacity, height-in-relation-to-boundary maths, and an honest read on what the development envelope actually looks like for your property. No fee. No obligation. Just the information you need to decide whether to take the next step.
➡ Request your free feasibility report
➡ Book a consultation with Sonder Architecture
➡ Read our full guide to subdividing in Auckland
What’s Next for Auckland Housing Density
The picture won’t sit still through 2026. The Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Act, passed under urgency on 2 April 2026, lowered the minimum housing capacity Council must enable through PC120 from around 2 million dwellings to approximately 1.4 million. Council has agreed a set of principles for how it will revise the plan in response — retaining the mandatory upzoning around the five City Rail Link stations, holding intensification along the strongest corridors, and reducing capacity in places more than ten kilometres from the city centre and on the lower-ranked bus routes.
The Council’s Policy, Planning and Development Committee will work through options in June 2026 and decide on proposed amendments in July. A second public notification of PC120 — including any amendments — is expected around August 2026, with a fresh submission period for everyone who wants to take part. Hearings then run through 2026 and into 2027, with PC120 expected to be made operative around mid-2027.
Anyone planning a project that touches the development envelope between now and then should expect the framework to continue evolving. We’ll be updating this article each time it does. The date stamp at the top is your guide to how current the information is.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does MDRS still apply in Auckland?
No. The Medium Density Residential Standards were withdrawn from Auckland on 9 October 2025 when Plan Change 78 was partially withdrawn. MDRS still applies in other Tier 1 council areas — Hamilton, Tauranga and Wellington retained it. Christchurch withdrew alongside Auckland. If you've been planning under MDRS rules for an Auckland property, those rules no longer apply to you.
What is Plan Change 120?
PC120, formally Plan Change 120: Housing Intensification and Resilience, is the replacement framework for housing intensification in Auckland. It was notified on 3 November 2025 and focuses density around transit hubs, frequent bus corridors and suburban centres — rather than applying blanket three-storey rights everywhere. Hazard-based rules in PC120 took immediate legal effect on notification. The rest is still in submissions and hearings through 2026.
Can I still build three homes on my Auckland section?
Often yes, but it now depends on your specific zoning and overlays. Many sites previously eligible for MDRS three-unit development fall into the modified Mixed Housing Urban (MHU) zone under PC120, where 3×3 development — three dwellings up to three storeys — remains a permitted activity. Sites affected by hazard overlays, character protections or other qualifying matters may not. A property-specific feasibility check is the only reliable answer.
What happens to my section if it was downzoned for natural hazards?
Around 12,000 Auckland properties were downzoned under PC120 because they sit in flood, coastal or landslide-risk areas. These rules took immediate legal effect on 3 November 2025 under section 86B(3) of the Resource Management Act. Check your property in the Auckland Council PC120 map viewer to see whether you're affected. Hazard provisions may restrict building location, raise floor levels, or remove intensification rights entirely.
When will PC120 be finalised?
A second public submission period is expected around August 2026, following Council decisions on proposed amendments in July 2026. Independent Hearings Panel hearings run through 2026 and 2027. Final operative status is estimated for mid-2027, although further amendments are likely along the way. The framework should be treated as in transition until then.
I had a resource consent based on MDRS — is it still valid?
Existing consents may need amendment if development hasn't started. The Certificate of Compliance pathway that protected unstarted projects closed at 5pm on 9 October 2025. If you held a building consent that relied on MDRS as a permitted activity, the protection only applied if you applied for a CoC before that date. For anything outside that window, speak to your planner or architectural designer about whether your specific consent is affected.
Did the capacity reduction to 1.4 million homes change PC120 already?
Not yet in its detail — but it will. The Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Act, passed under urgency on 2 April 2026, reduced the minimum housing capacity Council must enable from around 2 million to approximately 1.4 million homes. Council is working through which parts of PC120 to amend or withdraw, with proposed changes expected in July 2026 and a second public notification around August 2026. Mandatory upzoning around the five City Rail Link stations is locked in by law and won't change.
Will Plan Change 120 affect heritage and special character areas?
Yes, in a different way than MDRS did. Under PC120, heritage and special character protections remain a qualifying matter — meaning they constrain intensification in identified areas. Inner-city character belts like Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden and Parnell are likely to see significant change because they overlap with the walkable catchments around City Rail Link stations. The detail is being worked through in hearings and the August 2026 second notification. See our guide on Auckland heritage overlay rules for the current position.
