Your consented building work should be completed within two years of the date that your building consent was granted. If you can’t complete the work within this timeframe you can apply for an extension.

Building owners

As the building owner you’re responsible for obtaining a code compliance certificate as soon as the building work is practically complete. We recommend that you apply for this before booking your final inspection.

The code compliance certificate will be sent you once full payment has been received for any additional costs during construction. Therefore please plan if you are working on short timeframes from final inspection to handing over/moving in and needing the code compliance certificate to make that happen.

Residential property developers

The standard real estate sale and purchase agreement contains two clauses applicable to vendor warranties and building work undertaken on the property. These are in place to protect buyers by ensuring the building work carried out under the building consent has been completed and a code compliance certificate issued.

Therefore if you are a property developer of residential dwellings, you’ll need a code compliance certificate before the buyer

  • moves into a property, or
  • completes a transaction on a property.

For more information see code compliance certificates, or download a copy of our publication [PDF, 2686 KB].