Does your home protect your family? Why Resilience is the New Must-Have in Property

Buying a home used to be about location, sun aspect, and maybe school zones if you were that way inclined. These days? Buyers are starting to ask a new question: Will this place hold up when things go sideways?

Welcome to the age of resilient real estate.

With storms getting nastier, insurance premiums climbing, and newsfeeds full of social tension and infrastructure failures, more and more Kiwis (and overseas buyers) are looking beyond the granite benchtop and checking the foundations, literally.

Here’s what they’re after:

• Elevated sites above flood plains

• Solid construction - think reinforced concrete, not plasterboard castles

• Back-up systems like water tanks, solar, off-grid power and secure storage

• Community cohesion or, for some, isolation with control

  
  

Homes that can ride out a storm, blackout, or even a supply chain meltdown are commanding attention, and in many cases, a premium.

We’re seeing growing interest in properties with:

• Deep-piled foundations

• Steel framing or tilt-slab concrete

• Fire-resistant design

• Passive solar efficiency

• Rooftop gardens and food production capacity

• Private security or robust perimeters

  
  

This isn’t tinfoil-hat territory, it’s just smart investment. Resilience adds value because it reduces future cost and risk. Insurance companies already know this. So do buyers.

The question is: does your property meet the brief?