Why William the Conqueror is partly to blame for our housing problems

The quest to create affordable housing in New Zealand is an interminable dilemma. But as Dan Heyworth writes, the issue comes from the old British feudal land system on which ours is based. Recently I was involved in a project that responded to government calls to use off-site manufacturing to bring affordability to the housing … Read more

Why is building a house so expensive?

Everything from competition around supplying materials to how many lights you have in a room can determine the cost of building a house, says Box co-founder Dan Heyworth.  You’re not imagining things – the cost of designing and building really is going crazy. In February 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute studied the effect of implementing construction … Read more

Prefab building, the great hope for the housing crisis, is teetering on disaster

The off-site industry is full of great energy but in a mess, stumbling around looking for solutions, writes Dan Heyworth, CEO of Box, a company which has dipped its toe in the prefab business. Heralded as key to the government’s ability to build 100,000 homes over the next 10 years, prefab is hot right now. … Read more